Key Points – Americans are filing for Social Security benefits at record rates in 2025, with a 17% jump to 1.8 million applications in the first five months of the year.
-This surge is attributed to several factors, including demographics (Baby Boomers hitting “Peak 65”) and new laws like the Social Security Fairness Act.
-However, it also reflects growing public anxiety about the program’s stability amid the looming 2033 trust fund depletion deadline and recent Trump administration actions, such as deep staffing cuts at the Social Security Administration under the DOGE initiative, which have fueled concerns despite Trump’s campaign promises.
Record Surge: Why Are So Many Americans Rushing to Claim Social Security?
The annual Social Security Trustees Report, which provides an update on what year the program will run out of the ability to pay out full benefits, still has not arrived, after the 2024 version of the report arrived in early May. Last year’s report found that the Social Security trust fund is on track to hit that mark by 2033, which is less than a decade away.
With that in mind, as well as various other forms of turmoil related to Social Security, it appears that Americans are filing for the program in record numbers.
According to CBS News, older Americans are filing for Social Security benefits at “record rates this year, with the number of those seeking such benefits jumping 17 percent to 1.8 million through the first five months of this year. That number is expected to reach 4 million for the fiscal year, a 15 percent jump from 2024.
That surge in signups, per CBS, “could reflect growing anxiety about the stability of the retirement system amid cutbacks under the Trump administration.”
Other reasons for the surge, per the report, are growing numbers of older people, as well as the passage of the Social Security Fairness Act during the Biden Administration, which “provides more retirement benefits to public servants such as teachers, firefighters and police officers, and could encourage more people to file.”
SSA itself told CBS that the biggest reasons for the increase are members of the baby bom generation hitting “Peak 65,” the passage of the Fairness Act, and “mailers the agency sent to spouses and surviving spouses alerting them that they could receive a higher benefit if they use their own record to claim benefits.”
DOGE vs. SSA
It’s been a chaotic time for the Social Security Administration, since the onset of the second Trump Administration.
While Trump has often vowed not to cut Social Security benefits themselves, the Administration has enacted massive job cuts on the SSA, through both buyouts and later cuts, during DOGE’s reign of terror early in the administration. In February, SSA’s acting commissioner, Michelle King, resigned in protest after DOGE was given access to Social Security recipient information.
The Social Security Administration had announced in the spring that they were going to cut phone-based customer service, but later backed off that decision.
Elon Musk frequently argued that Social Security was victimized by massive amounts of fraud, but such claims have never quite been substantiated. NexGov reported in May that DOGE had gone looking for specific cases of Social Security fraud, and found just two of them.
“Overall, fraud at SSA is a miniscule problem,” the NextGov report said. “Only 0.3% of SSA’s old-age, survivor and disability insurance payments are considered “improper payments” — a category that also covers mistakes, like payments that should’ve been made but were missing a signature. Only a sliver of that 0.3% is due to fraud, according to a recent oversight report.”
The “Big Beautiful Bill” and Social Security
What effect will the Trump Administration’s major legislative bill, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, have on Social Security?
According to Newsweek, the version that passed the House does not include Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate federal taxes on Social Security benefits. But it does include “a temporary increase to the standard deduction for older Americans—a change that could lower taxable income for Social Security recipients.”
“One reason the president may have reneged on his Social Security promise is because of the financial implications of what he proposed,” Motley Fool said of the broken promise. “Although eliminating the tax on benefits would have boosted what around half of retired-worker beneficiaries would get to keep for a few years, it would have had disastrous effects on Social Security’s financial health.”
However, the bill that passed the House faces an uncertain future in the Senate, with key senators objecting to various elements of the House version and likely to pass something different to send back to the House – or possibly not pass anything at all.
About the Author:
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
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