Federal retirement claims backlog at lowest point in 2026

The backlog of federal retirement claims is at the lowest point in 2026 with just over 24,000 in OPM's inventory. New data shows OPM processed more than 17,000 claims last month, of which 14,000 were done digitally. Additionally, OPM says it of the 14,000 claims it received in July, 10,500 were provided to them in an electronic format. Despite this progress, processing times inched up to 98 days on average for digital claims and 109 days for all claims. OPM says, on average, paper based claims took 156 days to process. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.