Social Security’s hearing backlog grew by roughly 80,000 cases over the past year. The agency’s own performance page shows about 280,000 hearings pending in August 2025 and about 360,000 in August 2026, a jump of close to 29 percent. The same page reports gains elsewhere, including a phone line that now answers nearly every call, which makes the hearing queue the one major measure moving the wrong way.
What the August 2025 and August 2026 snapshots show
The Social Security Administration’s performance metrics page, last updated on October 1, 2026, lists hearings pending at about 280,000 cases in August 2025 and about 360,000 in August 2026. Both figures are the agency’s own, rounded by the agency, and both count cases sitting in the hearing-level queue at a single month’s end. They are not a fiscal-year average, and they do not measure how long any one person has waited.
The page does not explain the rise. It carries no statement about staffing, case intake or judges, so any cause beyond the raw counts would be speculation. What it does offer is a set of neighboring numbers that complicate the picture.
Other measures on the same page moved the other way
Initial disability claims pending slipped from over 907,000 to about 900,000 over the same twelve months, and average processing time for an initial disability decision fell from 217 days to 188 days. Reconsiderations, the first appeal step, dropped from 239 days to 212 days on average.
Hearings are the odd one out. The average processing time for a hearing is listed at 276 days, down only slightly from 279 days a year earlier, while the pending count climbed by about 80,000. A queue that grows while the average time barely moves means more cases are waiting in line at once, not that the typical case is moving faster or slower than before.
The page also credits improvement in contact channels. The national 800-number answer rate rose from nearly 75 percent to nearly 99 percent, and the average speed of answer fell from 9 minutes to 0.5 minutes. Field office visits averaged just under 21 minutes in fiscal 2026, which the agency describes as a 30 percent improvement from fiscal 2024; visits with an appointment averaged 6 minutes and walk-ins 26 minutes.
Where a hearing sits in the disability appeal ladder
A hearing is the second appeal step for a denied disability claim, after reconsideration. SSA’s appeal overview lays out four levels in order: reconsideration, a hearing with a judge, a review of the hearing decision, and a federal district court action. The hearing queue is the one measured in the 360,000 figure.
Hearings are run by administrative law judges. SSA’s hearings and appeals overview describes 163 hearing offices with 3 satellite offices, plus 5 national hearing centers with 2 satellite offices, and more than 1,500 judges who conduct impartial “de novo” hearings. The same page says those judges render more than 650,000 decisions a year across retirement, survivors, disability insurance and Supplemental Security Income cases. By that agency yardstick, a pending count of 360,000 is a little more than half a year of output at the hearing level, though the page does not draw that comparison itself.
The 60-day clock and the evidence cutoff
The rules that govern a hearing request do not change with the size of the queue. SSA’s request-a-hearing page says a disability or non-medical hearing request must be submitted within 60 days of the reconsideration decision. The request can be started online or made with form HA-501 through SSA’s document upload system, and nothing on the page attaches a fee to filing.
The process page adds two more dates. According to SSA’s hearing process summary, the agency sends a notice at least 75 days before the hearing with its date and time, and in disability cases written evidence must be submitted, or the agency told about it, no later than 5 business days before the hearing date. The summary also says a representative is not required, though SSA recommends appointing one as early as possible if a claimant wants one, and that the judge issues a written decision after the hearing.
For anyone who cannot afford a representative, the agency’s legal representation page points to usa.gov/legal-aid and the toll-free line 1-844-USAGOV1, and refers to its publication “Your Right to Representation.”
A count of cases, from the agency’s own page
The 280,000 and 360,000 figures rest on one source, SSA’s own performance page, and they describe case counts at two monthly snapshots rather than a trend line drawn through the year in between. Neither the hearing-level processing time of 276 days nor the pending count says what any individual claimant will face, and the page publishes no hearing-office breakdown. Its October 1 update, with August 2026 data, is the most recent public reading of the queue.
Reporting rules that continue while a hearing request waits
A denied disability claim that reaches the hearing queue can sit there for most of a year, and the 60-day window to request the hearing and the five-business-day evidence cutoff run on their own schedule regardless of the backlog. For claimants on Supplemental Security Income, the income and resource questions that decide whether a payment continues do not pause for the wait.
The SSI & Disability Action Kit includes the 2026 SSI income and resource limits, review and reporting steps and an income and resource organizer that keeps those records in one place.
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This piece was drafted with AI assistance; the figures were checked against SSA’s performance metrics page and its appeals and hearing-process pages.
