The Social Security program undergoes a series of revisions each year to ensure benefit payments keep pace with inflation and ...

The chart below ... if the third-quarter CPI-W declines in any given year, benefits are not adjusted downward. Based on that information, the Social Security Administration cannot calculate ...

Like other measures for inflation, the CPI-W is calculated monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Each year, the SSA averages the CPI-W value for the third-quarter months of July, August ...

The Consumer Price Index (CPI-W) for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers is the benchmark the SSA uses to determine the COLA, but that wasn’t always the case. How the COLA is calculated has ...

In essence, to calculate a COLA, the Social Security Administration (SSA) compares the average CPI (actually, CPI-W) for the third quarter of the current year to the average CPI of the third ...

For instance, CPI-W inflation increased 2.5% in the third quarter last year, so Social Security payments increased 2.5% this year. That is the smallest COLA since 2021.

CPI-W inflation increased 2.5% in the third quarter of 2024, so Social Security benefits received a 3.2% COLA in 2025. The following chart shows how much additional monthly income, on average ...