Every Social Security COLA since 1975

51 adjustments, each recomputed here from the raw CPI-W index rather than copied from a table. Every year links to its own page carrying the six monthly index values that produced it.

Adjustments

511975 to 2026

Highest

14.3%1980

Zero years

32016, 2011, 2010

Mean

3.73%across the record

Three facts about this table that most published versions get wrong

1. The year labels. SSA’s own table indexes each adjustment by the year it was determined. The public, the press and SSA’s fact sheets name it by the year it reaches a check. The two agree through 1982 and disagree by one from 1984 onward. This table uses the name people search for. The full problem.
2. The base quarter after a zero year. The comparison is against the last year in which an adjustment became effective, not simply the prior year. Those coincide except after a zero — 2011 and 2012 and 2017 on this table — where the naive reading is wrong by half a percentage point. The rule, and the error.
3. 1983 is not a row. No adjustment was payable during calendar 1983, which is why this table steps from 1982 to 1984. The year that is missing, and why.

Recomputed, not transcribed

Every adjustment in the table above is recomputed from the committed CPI-W series as a blocking build gate. 45 of the 51 reproduce SSA’s published figure exactly, including the statutory override in 2000. If a single one disagreed, no page on this site would generate.

Every year, one page each

• 20262.8%
• 20252.5%
• 20243.2%
• 20238.7%
• 20225.9%
• 20211.3%
• 20201.6%
• 20192.8%
• 20182.0%
• 20170.3%
• 20160.0%
• 20151.7%
• 20141.5%
• 20131.7%
• 20123.6%
• 20110.0%
• 20100.0%
• 20095.8%
• 20082.3%
• 20073.3%
• 20064.1%
• 20052.7%
• 20042.1%
• 20031.4%
• 20022.6%
• 20013.5%
• 20002.5%
• 19991.3%
• 19982.1%
• 19972.9%
• 19962.6%
• 19952.8%
• 19942.6%
• 19933.0%
• 19923.7%
• 19915.4%
• 19904.7%
• 19894.0%
• 19884.2%
• 19871.3%
• 19863.1%
• 19853.5%
• 19843.5%
• 1983no adjustment
• 19827.4%
• 198111.2%
• 198014.3%
• 19799.9%
• 19786.5%
• 19775.9%
• 19766.4%
• 19758.0%

Reading the record

• Highest and lowestthe extremes
• Zero years3 of them
• Against inflationdid it keep up
• Announcement datesand the 2025 delay
• The computationthe statute
• The next oneprojection

Applying the whole record to a single benefit is a different question from the one people usually ask. A $1,000 benefit in 1975 would be $6,297 today after every adjustment, floored to the whole dollar each year the way SSA applies them — not the same as compounding one average rate. Run your own amount through the current year.