The Social Security Administration recently said that the government will no longer send monthly SSI payouts to millions of people who get them. The SSA says that last year, more than 100,000 people were taken off the SSI rolls across the country.
In May 2024, 7,261,342 people got Supplemental Security Income, down from 7,380,737 people in May 2023. Because 119,395 fewer people were getting SSI payments in May 2024 than in May 2023, this is the case. Learn more about why the number of people getting SSI is going down if you get payments from it now or want to apply for it in the future.
In the US, more than 100,000 people will no longer get SSI
SSI payments are often given to disabled people and children who are blind and have little or no income. This group includes the 7.2 million people who get this kind of money from SSA. They make up most of the people who get SSI (6.1 million). The other 1.1 million are over 65 years old.
Between May 2023 and May 2024, the number of injured or blind claims who were no longer getting the benefit dropped by 140,034—from 6,281,068 to 6,141,034 in those two groups. There were 20,639 more people aged 65 and up who got help than the year before (1,120,308).
At that time, there wasn’t a clear reason for the drop in the number of broken or blind users. There were over 10,000 people in several states who were no longer getting SSI payments. Newsweek wrote the SSA to find out what was going on and found this out.
From May 2023 to April 2024, the number of SSI applications in California went down by 16,573. This was true even though the state had the most applications of any 50. Also, over 17,000 people who were getting disability benefits lost their right to get them. A lot of these people were blind or had other problems. From 708,695 to 690,351, fewer people got help in this neighborhood.
In Texas, too, the number of people getting SSI went down by 14,587, from 591,710 in May 2023 to 577,123. In other states with lots of people, the number of people asking for SSI also went down. For example, the number of people getting SSI in New York went down from 568,777 to 559,222.
The number of people getting SSI payments stayed about the same in some places. There were 7,923 people in North Dakota who got SSI last year and 7,906 this year. That’s a drop of only 17 people. Out of these people, only one wasn’t blind or hurt.
Lastly, there were small changes in a few other states as well. One state’s number of recipients dropped from 30,317 in 2023 to 30,015 in May, which is a change of about 300 people per year.
Changes to Social Security disabled benefits, such as SSI benefits
Last month, the SSA said that they would be making changes to how they look at applications for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and SSI payouts. The office wanted to make the change so that it would be easier to tell if someone has a disability.
That government group said they would make changes to the final rule to speed up the process of applying for disability payments and make the process better.
The new rule makes the fourth step easier. This step checks to see if the applicant has done any work that is connected. As of June 22, 2024, the final rule became law. Now, the agency will only look back five years to see if the work done before is still useful.
People used to have to give SSA a lot of information about their jobs from 15 years ago until this change. It might be hard to give information because of this, which could cause stories to be wrong or missing parts.
The company will also not look at jobs that start and end in less than 30 days. “The new rule makes it easier for people to apply for benefits because they can focus on their most recent relevant job activity while still giving enough information for accurate evaluations,” the government group said.
