Originally Posted by GUWonder

Part of it may be the summer travel season is anything but fresh now, but that’s not really what’s so much at work now. Here is what is at work:

Authorized overtime hours has reached unprecedented levels per week. Passport adjudicator numbers are also up by about 10% and slated for another 10% increase; however, the background checks tend to be the bottle neck for activating new hires in this role. There has also been the brining back of retired ones and some reassigned ones to help.

For a sense of how wrong things have gone with US passports: many a Congressional office has seen more constituent requests for expedited passport help within just the past 18 months than the very same offices had in total during the 5-18 years prior to the pandemic.