The Social Security Administraton's planning to ax 7,000 jobs. What this means for its workers and Social Security beneficiaries.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Social Security Administration is preparing to lay off at least 7,000 people from its workforce of 60,000, according to a person familiar with the agency’s plans who is not authorized to speak publicly. The workforce reduction, according to a second person who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, could be as high as 50%.

The Social Security Administration announced a “massive” reorganization and “significant” job cuts on Thursday that critics said could increase customer-service wait times and make it more difficult to detect fraud.