SSA Reports Continued Progress With Hearing Backlog

The Social Security Administration reported another decline in both pending disability hearings and the national average wait time during the second quarter of fiscal year (FY) 2019, which ended March 30, 2019. Results indicate the federal agency is making significant progress in its effort to eliminate the hearing backlog by FY2021.

Pending hearings declined from 858,383 to 723,755 in the past 6 months, and are down considerably from peaking at over 1.1 million in FY2016. The wait time at the hearing level now averages 530 days compared with 595 days for FY2018.

The SSA has reported a target of 591,000 hearings pending and national average wait time of 515 days by the end of FY2019 on Sept. 30, 2019.