Social Security COLA projected to be slightly higher than 2025's, but ‘many will be disappointed,' group says
In its latest projection, the senior advocacy group estimated that the 2026 cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) would amount to a 2.7% increase. This marks a bump over the increase that retirees saw in 2025 (2.5%), but it's still not enough to cover the ever-rising costs of goods and services that seniors are paying, TSCL believes.
'While a higher COLA would be welcome because their monthly benefits will increase, many will be disappointed,' Shannon Benton, the executive director of TSCL, was quoted as saying in a press release issued this week. 'TSCL's research shows that many seniors believe the COLA does not adequately capture the inflation they experience.'
Senior group proposes 'one-time catch-up payment' for Social Security beneficiaries
The research Benton refers to includes a survey of nearly 2,000 beneficiaries. Of those participants, 94% said they felt this year's COLA increase of 2.5% 'was too low and that their monthly Social Security checks would fall behind.' The survey also indicated that 57 percent of seniors live on less than $2,000 per month, and a good chunk of that group (about a fifth) said they spent half that on healthcare costs alone.
These issues, TSCL argues, don't stem only from lower-than-desired COLA increases, but rather how those increases are calculated in the first place.
TSCL has long argued that the metrics used to calculate the annual COLA (i.e., the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners, which itself is a measure of the change in prices for common consumer goods and services) do not take into account the costs that elderly Americans are paying for things like medicine, housing and groceries.
In the aforementioned survey, the vast majority of Social Security beneficiaries agreed that the Bureau of Labor Statistics should consider using another set of data to calculate the COLA, like the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, which focuses on costs affecting Americans ages 62 and up.
In the absence of any real movement on that idea, TSCL has also been advocating for a 'one-time catch-up payment' of $1,400 to be sent to everyone who qualifies for Social Security, pointing to 2009's Economic Recovery Payments or the COVID-era Economic Impact Payments as evidence of the government's previous efforts to provide direct financial assistance to citizens.
'A catch-up payment would help restore that lost value and provide urgently needed relief for retirees living on fixed incomes.'
A representative for the Social Security Administration did not return a request for comment on the proposal.
The amount of next year's COLA increase won't be officially announced by the Social Security Administration until October. The 2026 increase is based on Labor Department data from the third quarter (July, August and September) of 2025.
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