Online Posts Misconstrue Data on Social Security Numbers

Jeff Brown, a teacher of financing at the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, informed us, “Elon’s 394 million is not the variety of individuals getting advantages. It is the number of individuals with Social Safety and security numbers.”

Previously, we have actually resolved Musk’s and Trump’s remarks concerning people that are likely dead receiving Social Safety advantages. The amount of a Social Security retirement benefit depends on typical indexed monthly profits.

In 2014, 54,348,229 retired workers and their dependents got Social Protection repayments; 5,785,602 survivors obtained settlements, and 8,322,142 impaired workers and their dependents obtained advantages.

The SSA has 2 main tasks: assigning Social Safety numbers at birth and administering the Old-Age, Survivors, and Special Needs Insurance Coverage, or OASDI program, which gives an income when a private retires or can’t work because of a disability.

Elon Musk shared a graph on X purportedly showing even more than 398 million qualified numbers in the Social Protection data source. The Social Security Management reported even more than 68.4 million recipients in 2024.

Elon Musk shared a chart on X supposedly showing greater than 398 million qualified numbers in the Social Safety data source. Online messages misconstrued the figures to mistakenly claim they demonstrated how many people are getting benefits, which would surpass the U.S. population. The Social Safety Administration reported greater than 68.4 million receivers in 2024.

An SSA record from the Workplace of the Assessor General in July claimed that the management issues more than $1 trillion in advantage repayments annually. “Also the slightest mistake in the total repayment procedure can lead to billions of dollars in incorrect payments. For instance, from FYs 2015 via 2022, SSA paid practically $8.6 trillion in benefits and made approximately $71.8 billion (0.84 percent) in inappropriate repayments, most of which were overpayments,” the record stated.

The quantity of a Social Safety and security retirement advantage depends on average indexed regular monthly incomes. In addition, those who are handicapped and have actually worked for at the very least five of the previous 10 years might qualify for Social Safety special needs payments.

Elon Musk, functioning as a senior consultant to Head of state Donald Trump and working with the Division of Government Performance, published information on X, his social media sites system, that he stated show the numbers of “eligible” Social Safety and security numbers by age.

Brown informed us in an e-mail that without access to the data pointed out by Musk, it’s hard to totally deal with the inconsistency between the variety of eligible Social Safety numbers and the total united state population. Brown stated some elements that might make up the disparity are people provided Social Security numbers who died outside the U.S.; individuals who were issued numbers because they momentarily operated in the U.S. and after that went back to their home nation; united state expatriates; people released numerous Social Safety and security numbers as a result of identity burglary; coding mistakes in the SSA’s system; and illegal requests.

Formerly, we have actually resolved Musk’s and Trump’s comments about people who are most likely dead finding Social Safety advantages. As we created, incorrect settlements are a legitimate problem, but the variety of dead receivers still being sent out advantages is likely in the thousands. In September 2015, the Social Safety and security Administration began a procedure that automatically designates individuals aged 115 and older as departed and finishes repayments to them.

A Feb. 17 Facebook message said, “BREAKING– Elon Musk and DOGE have uncovered that there are 394 million Social Security recipients in the united state … Yet the nation has only 334 million people: a discrepancy of greater than 60 million. Who’s cashing those checks & just how quick can we secure them up?”

“It does not matter if there are dead people or ex-pats and even fictitious people with phony SSNs in their system as long as they are not awarded benefits,” Brown said. “It is when one mosts likely to honor advantages at retired life or for handicap that it becomes important to validate that there is a genuine person.”