Federal Manager's Daily Report

Due to the loss of experienced employees as the baby boom generation hits retirement eligibility—a trend affecting virtually all federal agencies—the SSA has increasingly turned to rehiring its own annuitants, nine-tenths of whom it brings back without the standard offset between their annuities and their salaries, a report has said.

As of last November, SSA had almost 1,200 reemployed annuitants—nearly two percent of its workforce—of whom 89 percent were working with a waiver allowing them to draw both a full salary and a full annuity.

The SSA IG said that even before Congress enacted an authority in 2009 allowing agencies to bring back federal retirees without the offset for specified periods SSA had been granting such waivers under several other, more limited, exceptions.

Previous to that authority—which expired for a short time late in 2014 before being renewed and extended through 2019—rehired annuitants made up only about 1 percent of the workforce.

“SSA has stated that, in its experience, very few annuitants are willing to return to work without a dual compensation waiver,” the report said.