12,000 Retirement Claims In January

A small town's worth of federal employees chose to retire in January. The Office of Personnel Management received 22,000 applications, about 1,000 more than it expected. It was able to process more than 12,000 retirement claims. That let OPM chip away at its backlog. Over the past year, OPM has been able to reduce the backlog by more than a third. Agency officials reckon they'll eliminate the backlog by September. After that, most applicants would begin receiving their full annuities within 60 days of turning in their access cards.