Fun with Social Security Numbers

Emmaline got her social security number the other day and that sparked a conversation about these fun little numbers at dinner one night, so I thought I'd look into it, turns out at ssa.gov there is all sorts of social security information available.

• Social security numbers are not reused, once a person is issued it, that number will never be used again.
• There are about 305 million people in the United States, and about 420 million social security numbers already used. So already about 115 million numbers have been retired, so to speak.
• They issue about 5.5 million new numbers each year.
• The numbers do have some meaning, mostly just the first three can tell you what state you were born in.

There is enough 'space' in the social security number schema for just shy of 1 billion numbers.
assuming that population increases at say .05% a year, and that 5.5 million number above holds true, we'll run out of social security numbers sometime around 2088!