Less Staff, Increased Workloads, Decreased Funding Led to Unprecedented Backlog FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE As a backlog of payment actions affecting Social Security beneficiaries continues to mount, so does a rise in the Agency’s improper payments. As of February 2024, SSA’s pending actions backlog reached an all-time high of 5.2 million pending actions, resulting in $1.1 billion in improper payments. According to the report issued by its Inspector General, Reducing Processing Centers’ Pending Actions (022313), SSA’s performance measure is to reduce the number of pending actions at processing centers (PC), as the pending actions alone contribute to an increase in improper...