What the Social Security Administration says is that the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) will go up by 2.5% in 2025. This change is meant to make sure that benefits stay valuable even though prices are going up, which is important for many Americans.
Still, it is important to remember that this increase will not show up in payments until January 2025.
Even though this is the smallest increase since 2025 and inflation is beginning to slow down, many senior advocates are worried that this small change could put a lot of people in dangerous financial situations.
We will talk about how the increase in Social Security will affect people who get it and what to expect in the future in this article.
Social Security beneficiaries will get their increased checks as of January 2025
If you are still not sure how much money you will get from your Social Security benefits in 2025 after the new COLA is approved, reading this will help. Around 72.5 million Americans get money from Social Security.
In 2025, those benefits will go up by 2.5%, according to the agency. From January of next year on, retirement benefits will go up by an average of $50 per month. With the new 2.5% COLA, here is a breakdown of how much Social Security will pay in 2025.
- The average SSA payment for retirees is $1,976 per month.
- The average SSA payment for retired couples is $3,089 per month.
- The average monthly SSA benefit for a widowed woman with two children is $3,761.
- The average SSA benefit for a widow without children is $1,832 per month.
- The average SSA payment for a disabled worker, spouse, and one or more children is $2,826 per month.
- The average monthly Social Security payment for a disabled worker is $1,580.
- The maximum SSA benefit for workers of full retirement age is $4,018 per month.
- The federal SSI payment per individual will be $967 per month.
- The federal SSI payment level for couples is $1,450 per month.
- The federal SSI payout level per essential person is $484 per month.
Remember that the annual boost will start going to retirees, survivors, and disabled people on January 3, 1997, if they were receiving benefits before May 1997.
Please look at the Social Security payment schedule for 2025 for more information about the payments in January.
Will Social Security recipients be able to keep up with inflation with this yearly increase?
The Social Security Administration releases the Cost of Living Adjustment every fall. It is based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, which is also written as CPI-W.
Through the third quarter of the year, this index tracks the average change in prices of a basket of goods that certain workers buy.
In 2025, the COLA will be 2.5%, which is much less than the impressive 8.7% increase that was seen in 2023 and less than the 3.2% increase that was seen in 2024.
Martin O’Malley, Commissioner of Social Security, said that this increase will help millions of people pay their bills, even though inflation has started to slow down. However, a number of senior advocates say that the change is not enough.
They think that the CPI-W does not fully take into account pensioners’ higher health care costs, which makes their purchasing power lower.
This difference makes people wonder if the yearly increases are enough to meet the real needs of beneficiaries in a world where the economy is changing.
In the past decade, how much has the cost of living adjustment (COLA) increased?
Based on data from the Social Security Administration, the annual COLA has been changing based on the rate of inflation each year. Because of this, we would like to show you how the COLA increase has changed over the past 10 years:
| Year | COLA increase |
| 2015 | 1.70% |
| 2016 | 0% |
| 2017 | 0.30% |
| 2018 | 2% |
| 2019 | 2.80% |
| 2020 | 1.60% |
| 2021 | 1.30% |
| 2022 | 5.90% |
| 2023 | 8.70% |
| 2024 | 3.20% |
