Social Security’s 2027 raise is expected to be about 3.5%, the largest since 2023

Forecasters expect next year's Social Security cost-of-living adjustment to be between 3.4% and 3.6%. The Senior Citizens League lowered its estimate to 3.5% after the August inflation report, and AARP and Kiplinger put it at 3.6%. Any figure in that range would be larger than the raises paid in 2024 (3.2%), 2025 (2.5%) and 2026 (2.8%), and the largest since the 8.7% paid in 2023.

How the raise is calculated

The law ties the raise to the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers (CPI-W), comparing its average for July through September with the same average a year earlier. The July and August readings are 3.32% above last year's third-quarter average of 317.265, so the September figure will decide whether the result rounds to 3.4%, 3.5% or 3.6%. According to an analysis by FedSmith, September's CPI-W needs to come in at about 329.5 for the raise to reach 3.5%.

What it means in dollars

The Senior Citizens League estimates that a 3.5% raise would lift the average retired worker's monthly benefit by $73.06, to $2,160.58. Medicare's trustees project that the standard Part B premium, which is usually deducted from Social Security checks, will rise from $202.90 to $209.50 a month in 2027, taking $6.60 of that increase.

Whether the index fits retirees

The CPI-W tracks spending by working households, and retirees spend more of their income on health care and housing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes an experimental index for older Americans, the R-CPI-E, and the Congressional Research Service calculates that it would have produced a 3.0% raise this year instead of 2.8%. It would have matched or beaten the actual adjustment in every year since 1986 except six, but BLS warns that it has higher sampling error than the official index.

The longer view

The chart shows every adjustment since automatic raises began in 1975. The largest was 14.3% in 1980, and no raise was paid in 2010, 2011 or 2016.

What's next

The Social Security Administration is expected to announce the 2027 adjustment on Oct. 14, and we'll update the chart that day. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services usually announces the Part B premium in November.

How we counted: adjustments from the Social Security Administration, shown by the year they were first paid. Before 1983, raises took effect in June; since then they have been paid in January, so no adjustment is dated 1983. The 2027 bar is The Senior Citizens League's forecast as of Oct. 10, 2026.