The Office of Personnel Management is slowly making progress in their backlog of retirements, but the timelines are stretching. The average time for a retirement to be processed is up to 66 days. Jessica Klement, staff vice president for Policy and Programs at NARFE, says that while the month by month numbers are going up, the backlog is steadily going down.
“The current state of inventory as of the end of December 2019, was just shy of 17,000 cases. The steady stream of inventory is 13,000 cases… that is the lowest number of pending cases, since the recently available data from October 2018,” Klement said. “If you got your retirement check in under 60 days, these numbers probably don’t matter. I was talking to a woman the other day whose husband retired less than a year and a half ago. It took him 7 months to get his full retirement check. How it impacts you depends on your viewpoint on this. I don’t think it’s anything to be alarmed of.”