Martin O’Malley, the former Baltimore mayor, two-term Maryland governor and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, is in his fifth month as Social Security Administration commissioner.

He took the reins of an agency that had been without a Senate-confirmed leader since July 2021 — and has struggled in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic to provide basic customer service as its workforce of 55,000 has shrunk to its lowest size in decades. The agency’s disability system can take more than a year to determine eligibility for basic benefits. And employee morale is at a low ebb, with just 52 percent of the staff satisfied with their job in the most recent “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” survey.