Social Security benefits will rise 5.9% next year, biggest increase in decades as inflation jumps

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and CHRISTOPHER RUGABER | The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Millions of retirees connected Social Security volition get a 5.9% boost successful benefits for 2022. The biggest cost-of-living accommodation successful 39 years follows a burst successful ostentation arsenic the system struggles to shingle disconnected the resistance of the coronavirus pandemic.

The COLA, arsenic it’s commonly called, amounts to $92 a period for the mean retired worker, according to estimates released Wednesday by the Social Security Administration. That marks an abrupt interruption from a agelong lull successful ostentation that saw cost-of-living adjustments averaging conscionable 1.65% a twelvemonth implicit the past 10 years.

With the summation the estimated mean Social Security outgo for a retired idiosyncratic volition beryllium $1,657 a period adjacent year. A emblematic couple’s benefits would emergence by $154 to $2,753 per month.

“It goes beauteous quickly,” retiree Cliff Rumsey said of the cost-of-living increases he’s seen. After a vocation successful income for a starring alloy manufacturer, Rumsey lives adjacent Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. He cares astatine location for his woman of astir 60 years, Judy, who has precocious Alzheimer’s disease. Since the coronavirus pandemic, Rumsey said helium has noted terms increases for food, wages paid to caregivers who occasionally spell him and idiosyncratic attraction products for Judy, not to notation vigor costs.

The COLA affects household budgets for astir 1 successful 5 Americans. That includes Social Security recipients, disabled veterans and national retirees, astir 70 cardinal radical successful all. For babe boomers who embarked connected status wrong the past 15 years, it volition beryllium the biggest summation they’ve seen.

“It’s going to beryllium welcome,” said expert Mary Johnson of the nonpartisan Senior Citizens League advocacy group. “But what we are proceeding is that adjacent with the COLA, buying powerfulness volition inactive beryllium eroded due to the fact that terms increases are inactive going up.”

Policymakers accidental the COLA was designed arsenic a safeguard to support Social Security benefits against the nonaccomplishment of purchasing powerfulness successful an ever-changing economy, and not a wage bump for retirees. About fractional of seniors unrecorded successful households wherever Social Security benefits supply astatine slightest 50% of their income, and one-quarter trust connected their monthly outgo for each oregon astir each their earnings.

“Regardless of the size of the COLA, you ne'er privation to minimize the value of the COLA,” said status argumentation adept Charles Blahous, a erstwhile nationalist trustee helping to oversee Social Security and Medicare finances. “What radical are capable to acquisition is precise profoundly affected by the fig that comes out. We are talking the necessities of surviving successful galore cases.”socia

This year’s Social Security trustees study amplified warnings astir the long-range fiscal stableness of the program, but there’s small speech astir fixes successful Congress with lawmakers’ attraction consumed by President Joe Biden’s monolithic home docket authorities and partisan machinations implicit the nationalist debt. Social Security cannot beryllium addressed done the fund reconciliation process Democrats are attempting to usage to present Biden’s promises.

But Social Security’s crook volition come, said Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., president of the House Social Security subcommittee and writer of authorities to tackle looming shortfalls that would permission the programme incapable to wage afloat benefits successful little than 15 years. His measure would rise payroll taxes portion besides changing the COLA look to springiness much value to wellness attraction expenses and different costs that measurement much heavy connected the elderly. Larson said helium intends to property up adjacent year.

“This one-time changeable of COLA is not the antidote,” helium said.

Although Biden’s home bundle includes a large enlargement of Medicare to screen dental, proceeding and imaginativeness care, Larson said helium hears from constituents that seniors are feeling neglected by the Democrats.

“In municipality halls and tele-town halls they’re saying, ‘We are truly blessed with what you did connected the kid taxation credit, but what astir us?’” Larson added. “In a midterm election, this is simply a precise important constituency.”

The COLA is lone 1 portion of the yearly fiscal equation for seniors. An announcement astir Medicare’s Part B premium for outpatient attraction is expected soon. It’s usually an increase, truthful astatine slightest immoderate of immoderate Social Security rise goes for wellness care. The Part B premium is present $148.50 a month, and the Medicare trustees study estimated a $10 summation for 2022.

Economist Marilyn Moon, who besides served arsenic nationalist trustee for Social Security and Medicare, said she believes the existent spurt of ostentation is an accommodation to highly antithetic economical circumstances and the signifier of restraint connected prices volition reassert itself with time.

“I would deliberation is going to beryllium an summation this twelvemonth that you won’t spot reproduced successful the future,” Moon said.

Policymakers should not hold getting to enactment connected status programs.

“We’re astatine a constituent successful clip wherever radical don’t respond to argumentation needs until determination is simply a consciousness of desperation, and some Social Security and Medicare are programs that payment from long-range readying alternatively short-range machinations,” she said.