Social Security Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA)

## What this measures

The automatic percentage increase in Social Security benefits each year, as the Social Security Administration's Office of the Chief Actuary lists it, 1975 to 2026. Each COLA is dated the first day of the month it takes effect: June for 1975–1982, December from 1983 (the December increase is first paid in January).

## Why it matters

About 70 million people receive Social Security or SSI, so the COLA sets the raise for a fifth of Americans and adds tens of billions of dollars a year to federal spending.

## How to read it

Since 1983 the COLA equals the rise in the CPI-W from the third quarter of the previous year to the third quarter of the current one, rounded to a tenth of a percent, and is zero when that is negative. The 2026 COLA is 3.6%; the largest since 1975 was 14.3% (1980); there was no COLA in 2009, 2010, 2015. Read it with us.ssa.cola_real_gap, which compares it with the inflation that followed.

## What it does not say

A percentage, not a dollar amount; Medicare Part B premiums deducted from benefits can absorb part of it. CPI-W is the index for urban wage earners, not retirees, whose spending leans toward health care and housing.

## Source

Social Security Administration, Office of the Chief Actuary, "Cost-of-Living Adjustments": https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/colaseries.html. U.S. government work, public domain (ssa.gov website policies). Palanor reads it monthly with /api/cron/ssa-cola-sync; when ssa.gov refuses automated requests it reads the newest Internet Archive copy of the same page.