ELi5 How many people will have to be born in the US before we have to reuse a social security number?

Question

ELi5 How many people will have to be born in the US before we have to reuse a social security number?

In: Mathematics

Answer 1

Social security numbers follow the format XXX-XX-XXXX

So that gives you one billion numerical combinations, 000000000 through 999999999

Now whether the US government would actually recycle old numbers once the billionth card is issued or not is questionable. You could issue social security number A00-00-0001 and gain billions more combinations.

And break a lot of databases.

When we get close to issuing 999-99-9999 there will be a lot of IT work to prepare computer systems for what happens next.