Personal Finance & Estate › Social Security › Social Security (OASDI)
Cost-of-living adjustment (COLA)
2.8% for 2026· Government program
Law or rule (2026)Set by statute, regulation or the agency; numbers change yearly.
Social Security's automatic yearly raise to keep pace with inflation: 2.8% for 2026.
See it on the Personal Finance & Estate map →How it works
Since 1975, benefits rise each January by the change in the CPI-W, a consumer price index for urban wage earners, comparing July–September with the same months a year earlier. The 2026 COLA is 2.8%, after 2.5% for 2025 and 8.7% for 2023, the largest in four decades. SSI gets the same raise. Medicare Part B premiums, usually deducted from checks, rose to $202.90 a month in 2026, eating part of the increase.
Why it matters for you
It makes Social Security one of the few lifetime incomes fully indexed to inflation, protecting buying power over a 25- to 30-year retirement.
Think of it like
Like a CPI escalator clause in a long-term lease, applied automatically every January.
Rules, limits and sources (2026)
The Social Security Amendments of 1972 made COLAs automatic; SSA announces each one in the fall using Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-W data and publishes the full history.
Watch out for
Whether CPI-W fits retirees, who spend more on health care and housing, is debated; an experimental index for the elderly (CPI-E) has often run slightly higher.
Connections (2)
▸Cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) raises benefits from Social Security (OASDI)Law or rule (2026)
How they connect
Each January the COLA raises every Social Security and SSI check by the same percentage, 2.8% for 2026, so the buying power of benefits holds roughly steady for life.
When it applies
Congress passed occasional raises until the 1972 amendments made them automatic starting in 1975; SSA announces the figure each October.
The rule
SSA's published COLA history shows every adjustment since 1975, matched to Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-W data.
Watch out for
Rising Medicare premiums can absorb much of a small COLA; proposals to switch to the chained CPI (lower) or CPI-E (higher) remain unresolved.
▸Cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) tracks Inflation & real (after-inflation) returnsLaw or rule (2026)
How they connect
The COLA follows the CPI-W, a government inflation index, so Social Security's buying power is protected, unlike most private pensions and annuities with fixed payments. It is one of the few truly inflation-adjusted incomes.
When it applies
The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures CPI-W monthly; SSA compares July–September averages with the prior year's each fall.
The rule
Published BLS data and SSA's COLA history let anyone check each year's adjustment against inflation.
Watch out for
The raise lags inflation by up to a year, as in 2022, and whether CPI-W reflects retirees' real costs is debated.