Why Some September 2025 Retirees Are Still Waiting For Their Pensions

In a bid to create a leaner, cheaper government that responds quickly to the orders of President Donald Trump, and to pay out bigger tax refunds, tens of thousands of federal workers were enticed, or pressured, by the administration to leave their jobs. More than 154,000 employees took the Trump administration's deferred resignation program (DRP), which provided months of paid leave in exchange for agreeing to leave work on September 30, 2025. Employees who took the deal make up just part of the 317,000 people who left federal employment in 2025. This massive staffing reduction has had an impact on services, including Social Security office cuts that could delay payments for retirees. But now, a lot of those former federal employees have yet to receive their retirement benefits, and a huge backlog is to blame. 

Many of these recent retirees had worked long enough for the federal government to qualify for the Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) program. Nevertheless, just under 139,000 retirement applications have been received by the Office of Professional Management (OPM) so far, of which only 103,000 have been processed, the Federal News Network reported.

And it isn't only retirement benefits former federal workers are waiting for; many haven't received their promised accrued annual leave money either. Karen Atchison, who worked for the IRS for 41 years, told WUSA9.com that she received nothing from the federal government since September 30. And while Atchison said she's expecting to get about $6,000 a month in benefits, it's unclear if she'll get these funds. "We don't even know what's coming in," she said.

It would be a costly misconception to think that federal retirement benefits can be processed quickly with record numbers of retirement applications being sent to the OPM. For example, in November 2025, OPM received 23,400 applications. In contrast, the agency had to deal with just 13,700 applications in November 2024. 

The increase in applications coincided with a drop in the number of workers who normally handle them. There were 5% fewer human resources employees available to process these retirement applications, and the OPM itself lost nearly 1,000 employees in 2025. So, while the OPM web page states it takes 67 days to process an immediate retirement, Federal News Network reported that the average processing time was 79 days in October 2025 and 73 days in November 2025. 

Meanwhile, OPM has launched a new online retirement application system (ORA) with the aim of speeding things up. While the new platform was credited with shortening processing times, Thiago Glieger, a federal retirement planning expert at RMG Advisors, told Federal News Network that he was concerned about the rollout because "OPM has not really handled this new [ORA] system before, and this many federal employees [are] retiring all at the same time."