Number of people claiming federal disability insurance payments is now HIGHER than New York City's entire population of 8.25 million

A record of 8,733,461 workers took federal disability insurance payments in June of 2012, exceeding the entire population of New York City by more than 500,000, according to the Social Security Administration (SSA).

Over the past two decades, the number of people earning a paycheck in the U.S. has dramatically decreased, reported the conservative CNS News. 

In June of 1992, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 120 million Americans were working for a living, compared to a little over 3 million who were relying on disability payments.

That equaled about one person taking disability payments for every 35.5 people on the labor force. Some 20 years later, that ratio has dramatically changed, with more than twice as many people receiving payments from the government.

When President Barack Obama was inaugurated in January of 2009, there were more than 140 million people with jobs and 7.4 million disability insurance recipients.

Fast forward to this May, that number jumped to 8.7 million people taking home federal disability checks compared to 142 million working Americans, or the equivalent of one person taking disability payments for every 16.3 people with jobs.

Only 11 U.S. states, among them California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, have populations larger than the number of workers on disability.

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