Social Security COLA is 3.2% for Next Year

Social Security Administration (SSA) announced today a 3.2% cost-of-living-adjustment to be effective with payments starting in January.

SSA announced today a 3.2% cost-of-living increase beginning in January of 2024. As usual, wage inflation was even higher at about 5.24%. This increases the wage base for 2024 from $160,200 to $168,600.

Wage inflation is the factor used to adjust all of your prior earnings up. As an example, assume your earnings in 2022 was $50,000. After applying the wage indexing factor, those wages for this year will now be approximately $52,620. That is amount that SSA will use to help calculate your future retirement benefit. This indexing stops when you reach age 60.

Some other items that have changed are as follows: