KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The Social Security Administration is changing its workflow, with agents now taking on cases nationwide rather than just locally.
- A recent investigation found members of the Department of Government Efficiency may have mishandled the Social Security data of at least 1,000 people.
- The government is currently shut down as Congress debates the next funding bill. This will not impact the distribution of benefits.
From changes to the Social Security Administration workflow to what happens to benefits during a government shutdown, here is what you need to know about Social Security for February.
Why This Matters
Most Social Security beneficiaries live on a fixed income, so knowing what is happening to their benefits and what may be changing is essential for many.
Upcoming Changes Coming To The Social Security Administration
The Social Security Administration is changing the way its agents take on cases for beneficiaries starting on March 7.
In 2025, the SSA cut 7,151 employees, or about 12.5% of the total workforce. So far in 2026, the agency has cut an additional 450 workers, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
To help SSA employees manage their workload with a smaller workforce, the agency is implementing changes next month to how it distributes work and processes claims. In general, SSA agents will move away from handling only local cases and toward handling cases from across the country.
The changes will improve staff efficiency and increase the availability of staff members to help beneficiaries over the phone or in person, a spokesperson from SSA wrote in an email.
”Our community-based Field Offices will remain our front-line, serving over 330 million Americans,” the spokesperson said. “The changes we are implementing…will empower staff in our Field Offices to focus on in-person service, while specialized teams manage complex cases.”
However, some SSA workers said they were worried these workforce management changes would be too complicated, add a heavier workload and lead to more mistakes, now that agents need to learn the different state and local laws for Social Security beneficiaries nationwide, according to the Federal News Network.
Your Social Security Data May Have Been Mishandled
The Department of Justice said, as part of an ongoing investigation, that former members of the Department of Government Efficiency had access to and shared sensitive Social Security information through non-secure platforms.
The DOJ confirmed in a court filing from Jan. 16 that an SSA DOGE worker shared sensitive Social Security data, including names and addresses of about 1,000 people, via email to other DOGE and federal employees. In addition, members of the SSA DOGE team shared Social Security data through the third-party server, Cloudflare.
“Cloudflare is not approved for storing SSA data and when used in this manner is outside SSA’s security protocols,” said the court filing. “SSA has not been able to determine exactly what data were shared to Cloudflare or whether the data still exist on the server. ”
The DOJ also confirmed that one DOGE employee at SSA agreed to help a political advocacy group whose “aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States.” The DOGE member may have agreed to assist the advocacy group by “accessing SSA data to match to the voter rolls, but SSA has not yet seen evidence that SSA data were shared with the advocacy group.”
What The Current Government Shutdown Means For Social Security
The US government is currently on its third day of a partial shutdown as the Senate debates funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
During the partial shutdown, Social Security checks are being distributed normally, and most Medicare functions, such as enrollment and coverage for medical expenses, continue.
For the last 43-day shutdown, about 90% of SSA employees continued working, and half of the Medicare employees still worked. However, some activities that were not directly related to the distribution of benefits were paused during the last shutdown, including:
- Benefit verifications
- Earnings record corrections
- Earnings record updates unrelated to the adjudication of benefits
- Payee accountings
- Requests from third parties for queries
- Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests
- IT enhancement activities, public relations, and training
- Overpayments processing
Votes to end the current shutdown could start Monday, and an abbreviated shutdown is unlikely to impact these functions.
