Category: Business News
Social Security benefits in the United States will rise by 3.6% in 2027, the Social Security Administration (SSA) announced on 14 October 2026. It is the largest cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) since 2023, when benefits rose 8.7%.
The 2027 increase is bigger than the 2.8% COLA for 2026 and the 2.5% COLA for 2025. It is also above the average increase of about 3.1% that beneficiaries received over the past decade.
Who gets it and when
The 3.6% increase applies to Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for about 76 million Americans. Nearly 72 million Social Security beneficiaries will see the increase in their January 2027 payments. About 7.3 million SSI recipients will see higher payments from 31 December 2026, because 1 January is a holiday.
The average retirement benefit will rise by about $75 a month, from $2,095 in 2026 to $2,170 in 2027, according to the SSA’s 2027 fact sheet.
How the increase is worked out
By law, the COLA is tied to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The SSA compares the average CPI-W for the third quarter of one year — July, August and September — with the same period a year earlier. The CPI-W average this year was 3.62% higher than the 2025 average, giving a 3.6% COLA for 2027.
The maximum amount of pay subject to Social Security tax will also rise, by about 4.2%, to $192,300 in 2027.
What beneficiaries should do
The SSA will begin notifying people about their new benefit amounts in early December 2026. COLA notices are available online through the Message Center of a personal my Social Security account for those who created an account by 18 November 2026 and opted into paperless notices. Paper notices will be mailed during December.
Note: an early projection of 2.8% for the 2027 COLA, published by the Senior Citizens League before the official announcement, is now superseded. The official figure is 3.6%. The 2027 Medicare Part B premium, reported as $209.50 in some places, is only a projection from the Trustees’ report of June 2026 — it has not been confirmed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which announces it separately in November.
Source: Social Security Administration, 14 October 2026.
