No one likes to hang on the phone waiting for assistance; when the issue at hand is vital, such as maintaining your Social Security retirement or disability benefits, the stress and aggravation can make the situation worse. The best thing to do in this case is to prepare before calling the Social Security Administration (SSA) or filing a new claim for benefits and know what to expect.
Announcements regarding workforce reductions, the consolidation and closing of hearing offices at the SSA and the desire to move more customer service transactions online have some older Americans concerned about getting in touch with the SSA when they need to.
The data available on the Social Security website can give you the information you need to better time a phone call and to steel yourself for long wait times to process disability claims. In March 2025, the average amount of time a caller waited on hold to speak to a representative in English was 1 hour and 39 minutes.
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Best times to call the Social Security Administration
The SSA typically receives 80 million calls each year to its national 800 phone number. Based on the average daily call volume data from April 2023 to March 2025, the SSA received its greatest number of calls in March 2025 with 10,428,157 calls for the month, averaging 483,549 calls per day. The second busiest month was January 2025 when they received 9,777,109, averaging 448, 423 calls per day.
The passage of the Social Security Fairness Act resulted in a surge in calls to the SSA. Although they added a recorded message about the Act to the menu of automated services, more than 6,000 people each day still choose to wait to speak to a representative about the Act.
You can call the SSA at 1-800-772-1213 between 8:00 am and 7:00 pm local time, Monday through Friday. Wait times to speak to a representative are typically shorter in the morning, later in the week, and later in the month. Mondays are the busiest and Fridays have shorter wait times, with the exception of the end of the day, when wait times steadily build to almost two hours by 5pm.
If you want to review the average wait times for every weekday for every hour from 8 am to 7 pm, visit the Contact Social Security By Phone webpage to see the full breakdown.
Day | Best time to call before 12 | Best time to call after 12 | Worst time to call |
|---|---|---|---|
Monday | 8:00 am: average wait time is 25 minutes | 1:00: average wait time is 1 hour, 32 minutes | 6 pm: average wait time is 2 hours, 27 minutes. At 7 pm: it is 2 hours, 24 minutes |
Tuesday | 8:00 am: average wait time is 24 minutes | 1:00 pm: average wait time is 1 hour, 37 minutes | 3:00 pm: the wait time is 2 hours, 3 minutes |
Wednesday | 8:00 am: average wait time is 22 minute | 1:00 pm: average wait time is 1 hour, 26 minutes | 7:00 pm: the wait time is 2 hours, 4 minutes |
Thursday | 8:00 am: average wait time is 21 minute | 1:00 pm: average wait time is 1 hour, 20 minutes | 7:00 pm: the wait time is 2 hours, 5 minutes |
Friday | 8:00 am: average wait time is 21 minute | 1:00 pm: average wait time is 1 hour, 8 minutes | 7:00 pm: the wait time is 2 hours, 15 minutes |
Automated telephone services are available 24 hours a day and do not require you to wait to speak with a representative.
Average call wait and callback time trends
Average wait times predictably ticked up in January after the passage of the Social Security Fairness Act in late December, as demonstrated in the graph below. Wait times surged from 1 hour, 34 minutes to 1 hour, 52 minutes in January. The wait times slowly improved to 1 hour, 44 minutes in February and ticked down again by 5 minutes in March to 1 hour, 39 minutes.
If you don’t want to hang on the line, you can opt to have a representative call you back. The average amount of time a caller waited to receive a callback from a representative hasn’t changed much from September 2024 and March 2025. The shortest callback time in that period was in October 2024, when callers only waited 1 hour and 49 minutes for a callback. The longest wait was in January 2025, with an average wait time of 2 hours, 31 minutes; in March 2025, callback times were not much better at 2 hours, 30 minutes.
(Image credit: Social Security Administration)
Bottom line
The SSA doesn’t miss an opportunity to remind beneficiaries that the wait time for online services is zero minutes. If you need a bigger push to open a my Social Security account, here’s a list of 15 Social Security tasks you can do online. These include applying for benefits, changing your direct deposit information and requesting a replacement Social Security or Medicare card.
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