An advocacy group is predicting an increase in Social Security benefits of 2.3% for 2026.
The Senior Citizens League, which advocates on issues affecting seniors, released its latest projection for the 2026 Social Security cost-of-living adjustment Wednesday.
A bump of 2.3% would be 0.2 percentage points lower than the 2.5% increase seniors and other beneficiaries received for 2025.
The annual cost-of-living adjustments are meant to help Social Security recipients keep pace with rising prices.
Advocacy groups like The Senior Citizens League say the raises fall well short of the actual price increases seniors and other beneficiaries are seeing and have pushed for a new way to calculate the hikes.
The raise for 2025 was the smallest since 2021, when beneficiaries receives a 1.3% bump.
The raise in 2023 was 8.7%, which was the highest increase in more than four decades. Beneficiaries received an increase of 5.9% in 2022.
Those more substantial increases were driven by the highest rate of inflation in decades. Inflation has cooled substantially since reaching a peak of more than 9% in 2022.
The Senior Citizens League issues a new prediction of the next cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security each month using a statistical model, the group said. The model incorporates the Consumer Price Index, the Federal Reserve interest rate and the national unemployment rate to make its predictions.
Predictions update throughout the year, adjusting in response to economic conditions, according to the league.
