When is the 2027 Social Security COLA announced? New benefit amounts to be revealed on this date

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is due to announce its latest cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) next week, with the agency expected to enact its largest annual benefits hike in the U.S. in four years.

When will the 2027 COLA be announced?

The SSA is set to announce the COLA on Wednesday, October 14, once the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has revealed its Consumer Price Index figures for September.

The BLS is scheduled to release this data, which measures changes in the price of consumer goods and services in the U.S., at 8:30 a.m. ET/5:30 a.m. PT on October 14.

How much will the 2027 COLA be? When will it take effect?

According to the latest forecast by experts at the Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a major non-partisan advocacy group, the SSA is on track to implement a COLA of 3.5%. This would be the largest such increase since fall 2022, when the agency announced an 8.7% adjustment amid surging post-pandemic inflation.

The SSA’s latest COLA will take effect from January 2027, chiefly affecting benefits issued to the more than 71 million Americans who claim retirement, disability and survivor payments under the Social Security program.

The adjustment will also be enacted on benefits sent out to recipients of Supplement Security Income (SSI), a separate SSA scheme for certain low-income individuals.

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How is the COLA calculated?

The SSA works out the COLA using the BLS’s Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), which focuses on inflation on costs such as food and transportation. The SSA compares the CPI-W for July, August and September in the past and current years, and applies the percentage difference – if positive – as the COLA for the next year.

At the start of 2026, the agency’s comparison of CPI-W figures led it to announce a 2.8% increase in Social Security and SSI benefits. Retired workers, who make up the vast majority of Social Security recipients – 77%, per the SSA’s latest stats – received an average bump of $56 in their monthly benefits.

If TSCL’s current COLA prediction bears out, a 3.5% adjustment would bring an approximately $73 rise on retired workers’ latest average benefit. Per the SSA’s fact sheet for September, this monthly amount stands at $2,087.52.

However, TSCL has regularly complained that Social Security retirement beneficiaries are getting a raw deal out of the SSA’s use of the CPI-W to calculate the COLA.

“Not enough weight” on seniors’ expenses

The problem, says TSCL, is that the CPI-W is a measure that focuses on the purchasing experiences of working-age people. As a result, the tracker “does not give enough weight” to certain expenses that are particularly prominent in the lives of seniors, among them healthcare and housing.

Retirees would be better served, TSCL argues, if the SSA referred to the BLS’s Consumer Price Index for Americans 62 Years of Age and Older (CPI-E): “The CPI-E regularly puts the spending inflation for seniors at two-tenths of a percentage point higher than the rate at which the CPI-W increases.”

In a statement released in September, TSCL’s executive director, Shannon Benton, added: “No matter if the [2027] COLA announcement comes in slightly higher or slightly lower than our prediction, seniors will probably end up disappointed in the long run. The reality is that older Americans allocate their budgets differently than people still in the workforce, so inflation hits them differently.”

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