Speaking next to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, Musk explained how the mine only allows 10,000 employees to retire per month because of the slowness of the manual processing of the paperwork.

He said he’s aiming to fix the process to allow federal workers to retire faster, which would meet DOGE’s goal of cutting down the federal workforce.

Musk said all retirement paperwork is handwritten and then goes down the mine and into a mineshaft elevator. “The limiting factor is the speed at which the mineshaft elevator can move determines how many people can retire from the federal government, and the elevator breaks down sometimes and nobody can retire,” he said. “Doesn’t that sound crazy?”

“You can do practically anything else and you would add to the goods and services of the United States in a more useful way,” the Tesla CEO said.

The DOGE X account shared further details about the mine after the DOGE leader’s comments.

Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process… pic.twitter.com/dXCTgpAWLs

— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) February 11, 2025

The mine, which holds employees in the government’s Office of Personnel Management, has been trying to revolutionize its process for decades without success. The government has been trying to automate the mine’s work since at least 1981.

At least $100 million has been spent on the effort to automate the work there. The long process for processing paperwork also delays the speed at which workers can receive their full retirement benefits.

The Washington Post reported from inside the mine in 2014 the five-step process for a worker’s retirement papers to be fully processed. The first step involves a worker filing their retirement papers and the paperwork being shipped to the facility. Once the paperwork arrives, a worker must match it up to other paper records or scan them into a digital database.

All their paperwork must be placed into a file, and missing paperwork must be acquired from other federal agencies. That paperwork is then turned into a digital file and reviewed separately by another employee. The process took at least 61 days on average then, the same amount of time it took in 1977.

The mine complex is owned by Iron Mountain, which leases out caverns for storage. The government moved its old records there in 1960.

The Washington Examiner reached out to the White House and the OPM for comment about the mine but received no response.