The OPM retirement backlog declined for the fourth consecutive month during June, falling to 33,851 total claims. That’s a drop of 4,696 cases (12.2%) from May and a reduction of nearly half from February’s all-time record of 65,237.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) received 8,663 new retirement claims in June, far below its established pace so far this year, while processing 12,751 cases during the same period which helped further drive the backlog down.
At the same time, OPM announced the end of an era in June: federal employees’ retirement applications have fully transitioned to digital processing. OPM called this the Last Day of Paper (LDOP).
OPM Retirement Backlog Retreats in 2026
Since peaking in February, the backlog has fallen every single month: down 9,556 in March, 5,793 in April, 11,341 in May, and 4,696 in June. Altogether, that’s a decline of 31,386 cases, or 48.1%, in just four months.
To put February’s peak in perspective, it wasn’t just a high point for recent years; at 65,237, it was the highest inventory level on record, surpassing even the 2012 backlog, when the total topped out at 61,108 in January of that year.
2026 YTD
MonthNew ClaimsCases ProcessedEnding InventoryChange from Prior MonthJanuary 202618,92315,57154,018+3,452 (+6.8%)February 202631,24018,14965,237+11,219 (+20.8%)March 202614,75922,23755,681-9,556 (-14.6%)April 202611,94017,17549,888-5,793 (-10.4%)May 202611,28619,43338,547-11,341 (-22.7%)June 20268,66312,75133,851-4,696 (-12.2%)
Processing Times Retreated
However, while the backlog shrank in June, processing times reversed course. The average time to process a claim rose to 108 days in June, up from 87 days in May and 78 in April, the highest processing time in the past 12 months.
Digital claims processed through OPM’s Online Retirement Application (ORA) told a similar story. Digital cases took 96 days on average in June, up sharply from 66 days in May. Paper claims averaged 120 days in June, so digital claims are still faster, but the gap has narrowed considerably from earlier this year, when digital processing ran 30 to 40 days ahead of paper.
Digital vs. Total: April – June, 2026
MonthDigital Claims ReceivedTotal Claims ReceivedDigital %Digital InventoryTotal InventoryDigital Avg DaysTotal Avg DaysApril 20268,74311,94073.2%26,84349,8885078May 20268,28811,28673.4%25,04238,5476687June 20266,8528,66379.1%26,32933,85196108
OPM has announced an official end to paper retirement application processing (Photo by Ian Smith/FedSmith)
The “Last Day of Paper” at OPM
As of July 1, OPM said that over 95% of all retirement applications are fully electronic, the only exceptions being for some smaller intelligence organizations that have different confidentiality requirements.
According to OPM Director Scott Kupor, “This means – no more paper – period!”
The digital growth curve has been steep. ORA handled about 500 retirements in its first month, May 2025. By the end of June 2026, that cumulative total had passed 155,000 applications. Kupor said ORA cases are now fully adjudicated in less than half the time of paper-based applications.
He wrote in a recent blog post that as part of reaching this milestone, OPM has released some new features to better serve federal retirees.
One is its pre-retirement tool, Retire Ready. This will give federal employees the tools to plan ahead for retirement and decide exactly when they want to leave federal service.
By starting early, employees can work closely with their HR teams to complete the entire application before their official separation date. This approach cuts out the waiting period that usually occurs while HR finalizes paperwork, thereby enabling OPM to receive fully completed retirement packages the very day an employee retires and eliminating unnecessary delays.
Kupor also said that because of the recent changes it has made, OPM will be able to start processing a retiree’s application before it has received the final payroll-related information from the employing agency’s payroll provider. Previously, this took 30-45 days in the retirement application process which meant federal retirees had to wait that much longer for their full annuity payments to begin.
New Customer Service Enhancements
The paperwork process wasn’t the only thing getting an upgrade. Recent additions to the Retirement Services Online website now let retirees handle several common tasks without calling: pulling annuity statements and 1099-R forms, updating direct deposit and life insurance elections, changing tax withholding and contact information, and reporting a missing payment or the death of an annuitant.
Before the end of September 2026, OPM plans to release artificial intelligence (AI) agents within its phone system to allow calling customer support 24/7 to get solutions that would have previously required speaking to a live agent.
And finally, OPM has started a project to digitize roughly 400 million pages of paper records still stored in the Boyers, PA mine, where staff known as “runners” currently retrieve paper files by hand for adjudicators working on customer inquiries. Kupor said earlier cost estimates for full digitization ran as high as $200 million over five to ten years; his team now expects to do it for a fraction of that cost in as little as a few years.
“…our ability to service our customers is directly impacted by the presence of paper files. Believe it or not, but we actually have ‘runners’ who work in the mine to grab paper files and bring them to our adjudicators when they receive a customer inquiry. Electronic records will reduce valuable time from problem resolution and make it seamless for multiple parties to access needed documents in support of a customer,” wrote Kupor.
Conclusion
Despite the slowdown in processing times highlighted in the June retirement processing figures, data from the last few months indicate that the shift to digital retirement claims has been much faster than the old paper process, and that will ultimately benefit federal retirees waiting on their full annuity payments. FedSmith will continue to provide updates as the retirement modernization process continues to unfold throughout the rest of the year.