The latest projection for next year’s Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment shows it remains on track to be the highest in four years.
The Senior Citizens League predicts Social Security’s 2027 COLA will be 3.6%, 0.8 percentage points higher than this year’s 2.8% but 0.2 percentage points lower than last month’s forecast. The COLA was 2.8 percent in 2026, 2.5 percent in 2025, and 3.2 percent in 2024. It was 8.7 percent in 2023 amid the COVID pandemic inflation peak.
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If TSCL’s projected 2027 COLA took effect today, average benefits would rise by $69.75, from $1,937.53 to $2,007.28.
The Social Security Administration will announce the official COLA on Oct. 14, with the increase reflected in the first benefits check for January. The annual increase is calculated by taking the average yearly change in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, or CPI-W, for July, August, and September. The July CPI-W came in at 3.4%.
Inflation has remained stubbornly high throughout the 2020s. From 2010 to 2019, the COLA, and inflation, as measured by the CPI-W, averaged approximately 1.4%. From 2020 to 2025, it averaged 3.7%, TSCL said.
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“One of the biggest challenges this year has been the sharp swings in inflation. It started at 2.2% in January, climbed to 4.4% in May, then fell to 3.5% in June. Fortunately, our model is designed not to overreact to these swings, keeping our COLA projections relatively steady,” Shannon Benton, TSCL Executive Director, said in a statement.
CPI-W has risen at an annual rate of more than 3% since March 2026’s release of February data. In 2025, the CPI-W peaked at 3%. The current CPI-W yearly change is 3.4%, 0.2 percentage points lower than TSCL’s projection, meaning the group’s model expects inflation to rise slightly in the next two months.
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