Social Security checks rise 3.6% in 2027, the biggest raise in four years
About 72 million Americans get roughly $75 a month more from January. The gasoline spike is a big part of why.
Known
- Social Security benefits rise 3.6% in 2027, the Social Security Administration said on 14 October 2026. - The average retiree gets about $75 a month more, starting in January. - It is the largest raise since 2023 (8.7%). The 2026 raise was 2.8%.
Not known yet
- Medicare premiums for 2027, which are taken out of many checks. Medicare has not announced them yet. - Each person's exact new amount. Notices arrive from late November.
In January, about 72 million Americans will open their Social Security payment and find more money in it. The question is whether it will feel like more.
The Social Security Administration said on 14 October that benefits will rise 3.6% in 2027. For the average retiree that is about $75 a month, the agency said.
The biggest raise since 2023
The increase, called a cost-of-living adjustment or COLA, is the largest since January 2023, when benefits rose 8.7%. This year's was 2.8%.
The raise reaches about 76 million people in all. About 7.3 million people on Supplemental Security Income, a separate programme for people with very low income, get theirs first, on 31 December 2026. Some people get both.
Why it is bigger this year
The raise is not a choice. By law it follows one price measure, the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, kept by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It compares prices in July to September with the same months a year earlier.
Those months were expensive. In the bureau's September report, published the same morning, gasoline prices rose 9.1% in a single month and are up 34.2% over the year. The wage-earner index the raise follows was up 3.9% over 12 months.
So the 3.6% raise is, in large part, the bill for prices that have already gone up.
The other numbers that changed
- Workers pay Social Security tax on more of their pay. The cap rises to $192,300, from $184,500.
- Working while claiming early: people below full retirement age can earn up to $25,560 before $1 is held back for every $2 above it.
- The year you reach full retirement age: that limit rises to $67,920, with $1 held back for every $3 above it.
When people will see it
The agency says notices will appear online in late November for people with a "my Social Security" account, and that the account must exist by 18 November to see the notice there. Paper notices go out in December.
The agency also repeated a warning that comes every year with this news: no government agency asks for wire transfers or gift cards.
Automatic yearly raises began in 1975. Before that, Congress had to pass a law each time.