Social Security Administration

The Social Security Administration said Social Security beneficiaries will receive a simplified one-page COLA notice. SSA said the notice will provide individualized benefit amounts, deductions, and dates.

Social Security announced a 3.6 percent cost-of-living adjustment for 2027, which it said would raise the average retirement benefit by $75 a month. Nearly 72 million beneficiaries see it from January 2027 and about 7.3 million SSI recipients from 31 December 2026, 76 million people in all. The taxable maximum rises to $192,300 and the earnings limit for workers under full retirement age to $25,560. The figure follows the September CPI-W, released the same morning.

Frank Bisignano said Social Security would be around for another 90 years. The statement was reported on October 12.

The SSA Office of the Inspector General estimated that SSA improperly paid about $1 billion to 333,800 recipients whose earnings were not properly reviewed or recorded. The payments concerned Supplemental Security Income recipients.

The Social Security Administration Office of the Chief Actuary said the Pelosi-requested proposal would not directly affect the financial status of the OASDI Trust Funds. The actuarial estimate was dated September 15, 2026.

CBS News reported that AARP projected a 3.6% Social Security cost-of-living adjustment for 2027. The projection was based on the August Consumer Price Index figures.

The Senior Citizens League predicted a 3.5 percent Social Security cost-of-living adjustment for 2027. ThinkAdvisor, reporting the figure on September 11, said the TSCL estimate and analyst Mary Johnson's were the last before Social Security's expected October 14 announcement.

With July's 3.4 percent CPI-W the only third-quarter reading in hand, forecasts ranged from 3.4 to 3.6 percent. The August index was scheduled for September 11 and the September index, which completes the average, for October 14, the day the agency planned to announce the 2027 adjustment, a return to the normal mid-October timing after the 2025 shutdown delay. The new COLA takes effect with January 2027 payments.

The Social Security Administration added 14 conditions to its Compassionate Allowances list for accelerated disability-claim processing. SSA said the list then included 314 conditions and that more than 1.2 million people had received approvals through the process since it began.

Senators Shelley Moore Capito and Jim Justice introduced S. 5243 to automatically establish Trump Accounts using Social Security Enumeration at Birth information. The bill was read twice and referred to the Senate Finance Committee on its introduction date.

The Social Security Administration launched expanded my Social Security tools and notices for disability claims and appeals. Claimants could submit three disability-adjudication forms online and use a Claim Status Tracker at the hearings and Appeals Council levels.

Treasury reported that over 6.5 million families had signed up for Trump Accounts. It said more than 1.5 million children were eligible for Treasury's $1,000 pilot contribution.

Treasury put Bisignano, the former Fiserv chief who serves as IRS CEO and Social Security commissioner, in charge of the program's expansion, tying account enrollment to the agencies that hold children's Social Security numbers and tax records.

The Social Security Administration reported an 8-minute national average 800-number answer speed and an initial-disability backlog of 853,000. It also reported 385 million online transactions in FY 2026 to date and a 30% reduction in field-office wait times.

The House Ways and Means Social Security and Work & Welfare Subcommittees held a hearing with Commissioner Frank Bisignano. The hearing was scheduled at the Longworth House Office Building.

On the anniversary of his swearing-in the agency listed an 84 percent cut in average phone wait time to 6.6 minutes, 20 percent more online transactions, 30 percent shorter field-office waits, a disability claims backlog down a third to 853,000 and hearing waits down 40 percent, alongside fraud-prevention and payment-integrity claims. Critics and the inspector general had questioned the phone metrics and the effect of staffing cuts.

The Social Security Administration announced that Disability Case Review would handle medical continuing disability reviews nationwide. State Disability Determination Services offices would focus on initial disability claims and reconsiderations, while non-medical reviews would remain with SSA field offices and processing centers.

Senators Susan Collins and Maggie Hassan introduced the We Can't Wait Act of 2026. SSA Actuarial Services prepared estimates of the bill's financial effects on the Social Security trust funds.

Arjun Mody was sworn in as Deputy Commissioner of Social Security. SSA said the Senate had confirmed him on December 18, 2025, for a term ending January 19, 2031.

The Social Security Administration said its Office of the Inspector General found its published national 800-number metrics accurate and its telephone performance improved in FY 2025. SSA said average telephone wait time declined from 30 minutes in January 2025 to 7 minutes in September 2025.

The Social Security Administration sent Congress a fiscal-year-end update on online access and customer service. It reported moving its online portal from 29 scheduled weekly downtime hours to 24/7 availability and reducing average 800-number answer speed from 28 minutes to 15 minutes in FY 2025.

Benefits for 75 million people rose 2.8 percent from January 2026, the first COLA of the Bisignano era, with SSI increases from December 31. The agency noted the decade's average COLA had been about 3.1 percent, and asked people who wanted their COLA notice online only to opt out of paper by November 19. Much of the raise for Medicare enrollees would be absorbed by the Part B premium increase announced three weeks later.

Because the Bureau of Labor Statistics could not publish the September consumer price index during the shutdown, the agency confirmed that the COLA, which averages third-quarter CPI-W, would be announced on October 24 instead of October 15, and said January payments would not be delayed. Forecasters expected 2.7 to 2.8 percent.

Under the March 2025 order modernising federal payments, Social Security told advocates that from September 30 benefits would be paid by direct deposit or Direct Express card, that temporary checks would no longer be issued on new claims, and that anyone wanting an exemption had to file a waiver with the Treasury. Roughly half a million people were still receiving paper checks.

Hours after Congress passed the tax and spending law, the agency issued a press release and a mass email saying nearly 90 percent of beneficiaries would no longer pay federal income tax on their benefits. The law in fact adds a temporary $6,000 deduction for taxpayers 65 and over for 2025 through 2028 and leaves benefit taxation in place; the agency posted a correction on July 7 after tax experts objected. The lost benefit-tax revenue would later show up as a quarter of the deterioration in the 2026 trustees report.

Former Fiserv chairman and CEO Frank Bisignano took over an agency that had spent early 2025 under an acting commissioner, DOGE-driven staff cuts and a plan to trim its workforce to about 50,000, promising that the administration would protect Social Security and make the agency a premier organization. Every COLA, trustees report and service change on this timeline after May 2025 is his.

SSA said that, beginning April 14, 2025, certain SSDI, Medicare, and SSI applicants could complete claims entirely by telephone. The policy applied to people unable to use a personal my Social Security account.

The Social Security Administration said it had set a staffing target of 50,000 employees. It said its current workforce was approximately 57,000 employees.

Seven weeks after President Biden signed the Social Security Fairness Act on January 5, 2025, repealing the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset, the agency said it was immediately starting retroactive payments back to January 2024, most to arrive by the end of March, and would raise monthly benefits from April for more than 3 million public-sector retirees, teachers, firefighters and their spouses. The law added an estimated $196 billion to Social Security's costs over ten years.

The Social Security Administration announced a 2.5 percent cost-of-living adjustment for 2025 for more than 72.5 million beneficiaries, the smallest since 2021 after 3.2 percent in 2024 and 8.7 percent in 2023, and raised the taxable maximum to $176,100. Commissioner Martin O'Malley said the increase would help people keep up even as inflation cooled. It was the last COLA announced by the Biden administration.

From 1983 the adjustment has applied to benefits payable for December, paid in January. Under the formula a COLA equals the percentage increase in the average CPI-W for the third quarter of the current year over the average for the third quarter of the last year in which a COLA took effect, rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent, with no COLA if the index did not rise. That is why the September CPI-W release each October settles the number.

The first adjustment under the new law was 8.0 percent, reflecting the inflation of 1974. From 1975 to 1982 COLAs took effect with benefits payable for June; before 1975 every increase had been set by legislation.

Until then every benefit increase was a separate act of Congress. The 1972 and 1973 Social Security amendments tied benefits to the Consumer Price Index instead, so that from 1975 the raise would follow measured inflation rather than a vote. The Social Security Act's section 215(i) still carries the formula.