Tens of millions of Social Security recipients also received a 2.5 percent increase in 2025.
The annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security and Supplemental Security Income payments is forecast to be 2.5 percent next year, according to an estimate released Wednesday.
Based on the federal government’s inflation data, Social Security checks will go up by 2.5 percent in 2026, according to an estimate from The Senior Citizens League. That is up from the 2.4 percent that was forecasted in May.
Notably, tens of millions of Social Security recipients received the same boost—2.5 percent—to their 2025 payments.
“Seniors should be concerned as inflation continues to tick upward. [The Senior Citizens League’s] research shows that there’s a serious disconnect between the inflation the government reports and the inflation that seniors experience every day. If the government tells us that prices are rising faster, it’s likely that seniors are already feeling the crunch,” said the group’s director, Shannon Benton, in a statement on Wednesday.
The COLA for next year’s payments is usually determined in October by calculating the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) for July, August, and September, according to the Social Security Administration.
More than 72.5 million people receive either Social Security or Supplemental Security payments every month, the agency says.
In her statement, Benton also suggested that there should be few changes made to how the consumer price index is carried out because it may impact seniors’ livelihoods, responding to reports indicating fewer businesses are being surveyed by the Labor Department.
“While streamlining the federal government is a good thing, that shouldn’t involve cutting back on our ability to measure how our economy is changing. Inaccurate or unreliable data in the CPI dramatically increases the likelihood that seniors receive a COLA that’s lower than actual inflation, which can cost seniors thousands of dollars over the course of their retirement,” she said.
It comes as the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said Wednesday that the consumer price index that measures inflation went up 0.1 percent last month after rising 0.2 percent in April. In the 12 months through May, the CPI advanced 2.4 percent, it found.
