Social Security benefits aren’t going to disappear anytime soon, despite what you might have heard. But the program isn’t in a good spot right now. Its trust funds are running out of money, and the government has no plan for how to fix it.
A year ago, the 2025 Social Security Trustees Report projected that the trust fund for retirement benefits would be depleted by 2033. The 2026 edition of this report is coming soon, and I expect that the news will only get worse for workers and beneficiaries. But that doesn’t mean benefit cuts are imminent.
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Why I don’t think the 2026 Social Security Trustees Report will bring good news
The 2025 Social Security Trustees Report came out last June, and it predicted that the program’s Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund would be depleted by 2033, or as late as 2034, if combined with the Disability Insurance (DI) trust fund. After the depletion date, the report projected that Social Security would be able to pay out only 77% of scheduled benefits.
But a lot has happened in the last year. At the time of the 2025 report’s release, the Social Security Administration had yet to finish paying out the $17 billion it owed to millions of seniors, thanks to the Social Security Fairness Act.
President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” had yet to pass. This included a $6,000 senior tax deduction, which, while helpful to qualifying seniors in the short term, may reduce the Social Security benefit tax revenue the program takes in.
These things have taken a toll on Social Security’s finances, and a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report from March 2026 reflects that. It estimates that, without government intervention, Social Security benefits will face a 7% cut in 2032, followed by an average 28% cut between 2033 and 2036.
It’s likely that the 2026 Social Security Trustees Report will also reflect these more recent changes and predict an earlier trust fund depletion date. But we won’t know for sure until it’s released.
Benefit cuts aren’t inevitable
While the above projections sound scary, the benefit cuts are unlikely to happen as predicted. Social Security faced a similar insolvency threat in the 1980s, and the government made changes to avoid this. But for some, those changes were just as unwelcome as benefit cuts.
The government avoided insolvency in the 1980s by raising the full retirement age (FRA) for younger workers, which acted as an indirect benefit cut. It also added Social Security benefit taxes, which force many seniors to give some of their money back to the federal government each year.
Avoiding benefit cuts this time may require similar moves or raising the Social Security payroll tax rate. The Trustees’ Report won’t tell us this. We’ll have to wait for Congress to decide upon a plan. When it does, workers and retirees alike will need to revisit their retirement plans to figure out how they’ll cover their costs after leaving the workforce.
