When will the Social Security COLA for 2024 be announced?

In 2023, Social Security beneficiaries received a historic increase in their cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). The Social Security Administration increased the monthly payments by 8.7 percent to assist recipients in keeping up with the price hikes that haven’t been seen in 40 years.

Inflation hit its highest point (in terms of the year-over-year average) in June 2022. While, over the last year, price growth has begun to soften, the trend has not been reversed. In July and August, two months that are critical to the annual COLA calculation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) tracked a 0.9 percent increase in average prices. However, as an annualized rate, the CPI-W only rose 3.4 percent, far below the levels recorded last year. While this decrease in inflation may be beneficial for many Americans, it also means that Social Security recipients will not receive the same level of increases they received in the past two years. That is due to how and when the COLA is calculated each year.

When will the Social Security COLA for 2024 be announced?

Every year, the Social Security Administration (SSA) announces its COLA increase after the CPI-W for September is released. This year, that report will be released at 8:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, 12 October 2023.

The annual COLA is calculated using the CPI-W, which measures inflation across a wide variety of goods and services. When making the calculation, the SSA only uses the third quarter (July, August, and September) of each year to calculate the COLA for the following year. The agency rounds to the nearest tenth of a percent.

How much will the Social Security COLA increase in 2024?

The Senior Citizens League, a non-profit advocacy group, predicts that the 2024 COLA increase will be around 3 percent when it is announced. Such an increase would translate to an extra $53.70 per month for beneficiaries who receive the average monthly benefit of $1,789.

While inflation is significantly lower than a year ago, the organization reports that a majority of older Americans who responded to a recent survey said that “persistently high prices still affect their household budgets.”

When will the 2024 COLA be applied to payments?

The 2024 COLA will be applied to payments made for January 2024, each of the eleven remaining monthly payments for that year. The first monthly checks to show the increase will be available on December 29, 2023, for Supplement Security Income beneficiaries. These checks are usually distributed on the first day of the month, except in cases where it falls on a weekend or a holiday, such as January 1st.