Elon Musk, in his mission to enhance government productivity and reduce unnecessary spending, has found a new target for improvement: a 70-year-old Pennsylvania limestone mine that houses all retirement paperwork for government employees. 

The mine, Mr. Musk explained while standing next to President Trump on Tuesday in the Oval Office, can only process 10,000 applications per month. That means that the largest number of government employees that can retire per month is 10,000.

“This mine looks like something out of the 1950’s because it was started in 1955. It looks like a time warp,” Mr. Musk said on Tuesday. He noted that the speed of the mineshaft elevator serves as the “limiting factor” that “determines how many people can retire from the federal government.” Sometimes, though, the elevator will break down — “and no one can retire. Doesn’t that sound crazy?” 

Mr. Musk shared the anecdote while accompanying the 47th president as he signed an executive order implementing the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s “workforce optimization initiative.” The measure calls on American agencies to work with Mr. Musk in his effort to purge wasteful spending by identifying government roles and functions that can be eliminated. 

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

The facility, which is located about 45 miles north of Pittsburgh in Boyers, Pennsylvania is run by the Office of Personnel Management. DOGE later published images of the facility on X, noting that all retirement requests are processed “using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania.”

The mine, according to DOGE, boasts 700 employees who operate 230 feet underground and process applications that “are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes.” The retirement process takes multiple months, the department notes. 

Mr. Musk cheekily responded to the post: “Maybe it’s just me, but I think there is room for improvement here.” 

The limestone mine was the subject of a 2014 report by the Washington Post, which described it as “one of the weirdest workplaces in the U.S. government—both for where it is and for what it does.” The Post followed the five-step process required to fully process an employee’s retirement papers and estimated that it took at least 61 days on average — the same amount of time it took in 1977. 

The mine was owned by US Steel during the first half of the 20th century. The government began storing records in the site in 1960, according to the Center for Land Use Interpretation. In 1998, the mine was acquired by global management and storage service provider, Iron Mountain, which continues to lease the space to the government.