COLA Estimate Tracker

3.6%. The Social Security Administration announced the 2027 cost-of-living adjustment on Oct 14, 2026. It applies to benefits payable from January 2027, and Supplemental Security Income recipients receive it with their payment at the end of December. Recomputing the statutory formula from the published CPI-W gives 3.6190%, which rounds to the same 3.6%.

The Social Security Administration compares the average CPI-W index across July, August and September of this year against the same three-month average from the last year in which a COLA was determined. The percentage increase, rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent, is the COLA. Nothing else enters the formula — not forecasts, not the headline CPI most news outlets quote, and not the cost of any particular household's spending.

CPI-W is the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers. It covers a narrower population than the headline CPI-U — roughly 30% of Americans rather than 93% — and weights their spending slightly differently, with more on transport and less on housing. Congress wrote CPI-W into the law that governs the COLA, so it is the measure the Social Security Administration is required to use, whatever other inflation gauges show.

On Oct 14, 2026, the day the Bureau of Labor Statistics published the September CPI report. The Social Security Administration announces the COLA in October by convention rather than by a fixed date: in 2025 the federal government shutdown delayed both the September CPI report and the announcement to October 24.

The COLA determined in October 2026 applies to benefits payable from January 2027. Supplemental Security Income recipients see it slightly earlier — their increase lands with the payment at the very end of December.

No. If the third-quarter CPI-W average falls below the base period, the law sets the adjustment to zero rather than cutting benefits. That has happened three times since the automatic COLA began in 1975 — the increases payable in 2010, 2011 and 2016 were all zero, which is why those years appear as 0.0% in the history table.

No. Once the Social Security Administration has announced it, the 3.6% adjustment is the one applied to benefits payable from January 2027. The next adjustment, for 2028, will be measured on the July to September 2027 CPI-W against the July to September 2026 average.

Benefits rose 2.8% for 2026, the increase announced by the Social Security Administration in October 2025. From January 2027 they rise by a further 3.6%, announced on Oct 14, 2026. The history table above lists every adjustment back to 2012, including the 8.7% increase that followed the 2022 inflation peak — the largest in four decades.

Applied to the average retired-worker benefit of $2,085.98 a month (July 2026), a 3.6% adjustment works out to about $75.10 more a month. That is an illustration using the national average, not a calculation of any individual's benefit — your own figure depends on your earnings record and claiming age, and Medicare Part B premium changes are deducted separately.

The CPI-W index levels come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics data series (CWUR0000SA0) and the COLA history and average benefit figures from the Social Security Administration. Both are United States federal government works in the public domain. The percentages here are arithmetic performed on those published index levels using the statutory formula — the implementation reproduces the 2.8% figure the SSA announced for 2026 exactly from the same data.