By Jack Phillips
Contributing Writer
The average Social Security payment for retired workers reached $2,000 for the first time ever, according to a report released by the Social Security Administration this week.
For retired workers, the average monthly payment stood at $2,002.39, up 4.5% from $1,916 a year earlier, according to the data.
The $2,000 check milestone applies only to retired workers, who comprise 75% of the more than 69 million people who receive Social Security benefits. The average monthly benefits for people, including those who are not retired workers, stood at $1,857.75 in May, the snapshot data show.
Supplemental Security Income payments in May averaged out to around $718.30 for all 7.4 million or so SSI recipients, it shows.
In April 2025, retired workers took home an average monthly payment of $1,999.97. The SSA did not provide a date for the statistical snapshot for May, but a review of the report’s creation date shows it was released on June 9.
Social Security and Supplemental Security Income payments increase each year to keep up with inflation, called a cost-of-living adjustment.
The annual COLA for Social Security and SSI payments is forecast to be 2.5% next year, according to an estimate from The Senior Citizens League, up from a previous forecast of 2.4%. Recipients also received a 2.5% boost to their 2025 payments.
“Seniors should be concerned as inflation continues to tick upward. [The Senior Citizens League’s] research shows that there’s a serious disconnect between the inflation the government reports and the inflation that seniors experience every day. If the government tells us that prices are rising faster, it’s likely that seniors are already feeling the crunch,” the group’s executive director, Shannon Benton, said in a statement.
The COLA for next year’s payments is usually determined in October by calculating the consumer price index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers for July, August, and September, according to the Social Security Administration.
On Wednesday, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said that the consumer price index that measures inflation went up 0.1% last month after rising 0.2% in April. In the 12 months through May, the CPI advanced 2.4%, it found.
Meanwhile, a law that went into effect earlier this year, the Social Security Fairness Act, boosted benefits for approximately 3 million people who receive pensions that were previously not covered under Social Security, including some government jobs.
The Congressional Research Service estimated that in December 2023, there were 745,679 people, about 1% of all Social Security beneficiaries, who had their benefits reduced by the Government Pension Offset. About 2.1 million people, or about 3% of all beneficiaries, were affected by the Windfall Elimination Provision. Both provisions were eliminated under the Social Security Fairness Act, which was signed into law by former President Joe Biden.
The yearly Social Security and Medicare trustees report released in May said the program’s trust fund will be unable to pay full benefits starting in 2035. The new law will hasten the program’s insolvency date by about half a year.
More than 72.5 million people receive either Social Security or Supplemental Security payments every month, the agency says.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
