Social Security beneficiaries will have to wait a bit longer to find out how much their benefits payments will increase by for 2026. Thanks to the ongoing government shut down, the scheduled announcement for the annual cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) has been delayed by more than a week.
Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that it will now publish the September 2025 Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Friday, Oct. 24. Once the CPI is announced, the Social Security Administration can then reveal the COLA for 2026.
The yearly COLA is determined by the Social Security Administration. The agency determines the adjustment by using the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners (CPI-W) for the months of July, August and September and comparing that to the same time period from the year prior. The CPI-W is calculated by analyzing the spending habits of Americans when it comes to items like food, consumer goods, housing, health care and more.
Because the data for September 2025 has not been published, the SSA cannot calculate the COLA.
The COLA was originally scheduled to be unveiled on Wednesday, Oct. 15, however, because the government is shut down, the BLS has been unable to continue its work. USA Today reports that BLS employees were ordered back to work late last week in order to make sure the COLA can be announced this month.
While an official announcement will be made by the SSA, estimates from the non-partisan senior advocacy group, The Senior Citizens League expect the COLA to be 2.7%.
“Seniors across America are holding their breath as we wait for the official COLA announcement in October,” said TSCL director Shannon Benton. “Our research shows that about 39 percent of seniors depend on their benefits for all their income, so the COLA announcement has a direct effect on their quality of life.”
If the COLA comes in at 2.7%, it would represent only a .2% increase from the 2.5% COLA in 2025. Over the last 10 years, the yearly adjustment has routinely come in below the average inflation rate of 3%, with the exception of three years during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2016, the COLA has been:
- January 2016 — 0.0%
- January 2017 — 0.3%
- January 2018 — 2.0%
- January 2019 — 2.8%
- January 2020 — 1.6%
- January 2021 — 1.3%
- January 2022 — 5.9%
- January 2023 — 8.7%
- January 2024 — 3.2%
- January 2025 — 2.5%
“Many seniors believe inflation is much higher than the COLA estimates. For example, TSCL estimates that about 80 percent of seniors believed inflation in 2024 was substantially higher than the 2.5 percent COLA implemented to make up for it at the beginning of 2025,” Benton said.
An estimated 74.5 million people receive Social Security benefits.
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