Why in the World Does the Social Security Website Have Hours?

A website that is only open during business hours? Here’s the likely reason for this craziness.

“11:30 PM on a Saturday? You can’t need to access Social Security, no old person is awake this late!” Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

It feels like the ultimate Kafkaesque expression of government bureaucracy: the United States’ Social Security Administration (SSA) website has listed hours when it is open.

If you try to access the secure post-login portion of the SSA website (known as My Social Security account, at ssa.gov) outside of these hours, you’ll just be met by an error message, stating the hours of operation and encouraging you to return at these times:

Why yes, I did take this screenshot myself. Don’t steal my Social Security number! Source.

Thankfully, the hours are not the simple 8 AM to 5 PM that you might find if you showed up in person. On weekdays, the site is up for 20 hours per day, with 4 hours of downtime in the early morning. On weekends, the site is live for less time; 18 hours on Saturday and 15.5 hours on Sunday.

At least it’s open still on Federal holidays?

Now, I’m not here to talk about whether this is a good decision from the SSA in regards to customer service and ease of access. (I do suspect that the SSA…