For more than 72 million people in the United States, getting their Social Security payments is very important. Because of this, any change in this area could have a big effect on Americans whose only source of income is these jobs.
For example, people who depend on SSI payments might be hit the hardest because they already have a hard time meeting all their basic needs. Because of this, the Social Security Administration recently confirmed that on the first of the month, more than 100,000 people who get Supplemental Security Income (SSI) will no longer get their regular benefits.
SSA statistics show that over 100,000 people across the country were taken off of SSI rolls last year. For example, the number of Americans getting SSI payments dropped by 119,395 from May 2023 to May 2024.
In May 2023, there were about 7,380,740 people getting payments, and in May 2024, there were about 7,261,340. If you are currently getting SSI payments or want to apply for this Social Security program, find out more about the reasons for this drop in recipients.
Goodbye to 2025 SSI Payments: Beneficiaries will no longer receive their monthly benefits
About 6.2 million of the 7.2 million people who get this type of benefit from Social Security are in this group. This includes most of the people who get SSI payments. The other 1.1 million are 65 years or older.
Specifically, the number of blind or disabled claimants who were no longer getting the benefit dropped by 140,034, from 6,281,068 in May 2023 to 6,141,034 in May 2024. All together, 20,639 more people aged 65 and up (1,120,308) got help than the previous year (1,099,669).
For this time period, it is hard to figure out why the number of blind and low-vision users went down. Newsweek said that more than 10,000 people in different states were no longer getting their SSI payments.
The number of SSI applications dropped by 16,573 in California between May 2023 and 2024, even though the state had the most applications of any state in the US.In addition, almost 17,000 disability recipients were not eligible. Most of these people were blind or disabled.
Also, the number of people in Texas getting SSI will go down from 591,710 in May 2023 to 577,123. This is a drop of 14,587. In other states with lots of people, the number of people applying for SSI went down.
The number of SSI applications in New York dropped from 568,777 to 559,222. The number of people applying for SSI help didn’t change much in other states. In the same way, the number of people receiving SSI in North Dakota dropped from 7,923 to 7,906 this year.
All of those people were blind or disabled. Small changes happened in Rhode Island’s beneficiaries as well. From 30,317 in 2023 to 30,015 in May, the number of beneficiaries changed by about 300 people each year.
Extra changes that beneficiaries should be aware of in the coming months
The Social Security Administration (SSA) has announced changes to the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program and applications for benefits. These changes are meant to make it easier to prove disability and cut down on the time people have to wait for decisions, which will make the review process go more quickly.
The new rule makes it easier for the fourth phase, which checks if the applicant can do all the necessary tasks. The final rule became law on June 22, 2024, and the agency will only have to look back five years to figure out what activities were relevant in the past.
Before this change, the Social Security Administration (SSA) asked people to give detailed information about all the jobs they had in the past 15 years. This might be hard to do, which could cause reporting that is incomplete or wrong.
The company will also no longer look at jobs that start and end in less than 30 days. As the SSA had already said, the new rules will make the application process easier by letting people focus on their most recent relevant work experience while still giving enough information for a proper evaluation.
