OPM Killed the Paper Form. Its Digital One Got Three Times Slower.
Summary
On July 1, OPM ended 65 years of paper federal retirement processing. But the digital system built to replace it took 96 days to process a claim in June — nearly triple the 34 days it took in February — even as the total backlog fell by almost half.
The backlog fell by half. It's still a record
The queue built fast: a wave of retirements tied to the 2025 "Fork in the Road" deferred-resignation offer and an October 2025 government shutdown pushed 's pending caseload to 65,237 by February 2026 — an all-time high. Since then it has fallen for four straight months, to 33,851 by the end of June, according to OPM's own monthly processing-status report.
View data as table
| Oct-25 | 34,587 | |
|---|---|---|
| Nov-25 | 48,396 | |
| Dec-25 | 50,566 | |
| Jan-26 | 54,018 | |
| Feb-26 | 65,237 | record high |
| Mar-26 | 55,681 | |
| Apr-26 | 49,888 | |
| May-26 | 38,547 | |
| Jun-26 | 33,851 | most recent month |
That is real progress on the pile. It is not progress on the wait: processed 19,433 claims in May and another 12,751 in June, clearing cases faster than new ones arrived. But the same report shows the average claim processed in June took 108 days — up 52% from 71 days in February, when the backlog was at its worst. Shrinking the pile and shortening the line turned out to be two different problems, and has only solved the first one.
The fast lane got three times slower
The obvious explanation would be that paper — mailed folders, missing signatures, manual keying — is what's slow, and digital is what's fast. That was true in February: digital claims averaged 34 days that month, while 's own processing-times page still listed immediate retirements overall at a much longer wait. By June, it wasn't true anymore.
View data as table
| Oct-25 | 45 days | |
|---|---|---|
| Nov-25 | 38 days | |
| Dec-25 | 40 days | |
| Jan-26 | 48 days | |
| Feb-26 | 34 days | fastest month |
| Mar-26 | 39 days | |
| Apr-26 | 50 days | |
| May-26 | 66 days | |
| Jun-26 | 96 days | nearly triple February; June paper claims averaged 120 days |
As digital's share of new claims climbed — from roughly 30% of applications in October to 79% (6,852 of 8,663) in June — its average processing time climbed with it, from 34 days in February to 96 days in June, per 's monthly processing-status report. Paper didn't fare much better: 's own June note states plainly, "In June, digital cases were processed in 96 days, and paper claims were processed in 120 days." The gap between the two methods narrowed to 24 days — not because digital sped up, but because the backlog moved into the harder cases now that the easy digital ones have mostly cleared, and 's June official figure, Immediate Retirements — 108 days, reflects a caseload increasingly made up of exactly those.
While a claim sits in that queue, does pay something: per its own Retirement Quick Guide (RI 23-1), retirees receive interim payments worth "approximately 60–80% of your finalized net payment for most people" — a partial check, with federal tax withheld but no deduction (or credit) yet for health or life insurance, no cost-of-living adjustment, and no retirement supplement. The rest arrives later, as a lump-sum adjustment payment, only once finishes the case it's been sitting on for months.
The takeaway
- The backlog is not the wait. 's pending caseload fell 48% from its February peak, but the average claim processed in June still took 52% longer than one processed in February — 108 days versus 71.
- The fix is the bottleneck now. Digital claims — the ones 's new mandatory system is built to fast-track — took nearly three times as long in June (96 days) as they did in February (34 days), even as they came to make up 79% of the caseload.
- Retirees carry the float. Interim pay covers only 60–80% of a finalized annuity while a claim is pending, per 's own guide — the government keeps the rest until it closes the case.
Monthly figures are for new claims processed in the named month, not all pending cases, and June 2026 is the most recent month with finalized data as of publication; 's headline "108 days" figure for immediate retirements excludes deferred and postponed applications, which the agency tracks separately and which typically take longer.
Sources
- U.S. Office of Personnel Management — CSRS/FERS New Claims Monthly Processing Times, the monthly report behind every backlog, claims, and processing-day figure in this piece, including the June 2026 note on digital-versus-paper processing time. opm.gov
- — Retirement Processing Times, the agency's public-facing page of current processing estimates by claim type, reflecting June 2026 data. opm.gov
- — news release, Marks "Last Day of Paper," Ending Paper Retirement Processing After More Than 65 Years (July 2026) — the July 1 digitization milestone and ORA application volume. opm.gov
- — Retirement Quick Guide (RI 23-1) — the official definition and 60–80% range for interim annuity payments. opm.gov
- NBC News — Inside the mine housing the federal government's retirement records — physical description of the Boyers, Pennsylvania retirement records facility. nbcnews.com
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For 65 years, a federal retirement claim ended its journey roughly 230 feet underground, in a former limestone mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania, where clerks pulled folders from among 26,000 file cabinets holding more than 400 million paper records and calculated pensions by hand. On July 1, 2026, OPM declared that era over, routing more than 95% of federal retirements permanently through its Online Retirement Application (ORA). The paper is gone. The wait is not — and by 's own monthly numbers, it's the digital system that's now slowing down.