Personnel Cuts Worsen Administrative Burden for Disability Aid

Personnel cuts enacted by Congress and the Trump administration are making the administrative burden for disabled individuals seeking benefits even more daunting, experts participating in a webinar last week said.

The session, “Navigating Disability Benefits: New Research on Administrative Burden and Work Incentives,” was hosted by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Participants said new staffing reductions, particularly at the Social Security Administration, make the already difficult process of seeking and retaining disability benefits even harder.

Ramonia Rochester, director of research at the National Disability Institute, said that even before the latest cuts—13 percent of SSA staff has been laid off in 2025 alone—there has been a 19 percent decrease in the agency’s customer service budget over the past 14 years. That’s despite a 28% increase in the number of beneficiaries in need.

Rochester said an administrative burden is defined as any difficulty that makes it challenging for individuals to access, navigate or maintain social services and assistance for which they are likely eligible. That can include: complex, confusing application processes; long wait times for reviews and appeals; lengthy, complicated, or otherwise inaccessible paperwork; and poorly designed or inaccessible digital resources, such as websites.

Applicants or beneficiaries face learning and psychological costs as well as stress and stigma that can impact mental and physical health, Rochester said. “Administrative burdens have greater impact on people with worse medical conditions,” she said. “Eligibility redeterminations are often laborious. And evaluation and reporting requirements lead to fewer being eligible.”

Rochester said a major issue in the disability benefits system is the stringent income limits required for federal benefits—$1,620 per month for non-blind individuals and $2,700 per month for blind individuals in 2025—and the difficulty they present for being able to work without losing aid.

Debra Bruckner, a research professor at the University of New Hampshire, said a 2024 study she conducted found that rural residents of New Hampshire applying for SSA disability benefits faced much higher learning, compliance, and psychological costs than those applying for retirement or survivor benefits.

She said applicants who were able to access a Social Security field office were much more satisfied with their experience, but many areas in the state lack easy access to SSA offices. Applicants engaging with SSA staff by phone or digitally reported higher levels of frustration. “In general, people struggled with access to technology, as well as the ability to use technology,” Bruckner said.

Mike Levere, an assistant professor of economics at Colgate University, shared findings from a study he conducted looking at work activity among beneficiaries in the Social Security Disability Insurance Program, which he found to be very limited.

Levere suggested two major reasons why:

• Severe disabilities and lack of access and accommodations in many workplaces make it very difficult for disabled individuals to find work opportunities.
• The rules of the program are so confusing when it comes to how work income may impact your benefits that participants may decide to stay away from the workplace for fear of losing their aid.

“I’ve worked on disability policy for at least 5 years before I felt like I actually understood how these rules really worked,” Levere said. “It’s hard.”