First Social Security Payments of 2025 With 2.5 Percent Increase Coming Soon

Blank Social Security checks are run through a printer at the US Treasury printing facility in Philadelphia, Pa. William Thomas Cain/Getty Images

The first Social Security retirement payments for 2025 will be sent out next week, reflecting an increase of 2.5 percent owing to the most recent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA).

In October 2024, the Social Security Administration (SSA) announced the COLA, representing the smallest increase in about four years. The adjustment is made in light of inflation for the previous three months.

Retirees who were born on the first through the tenth will get their monthly Social Security payment for January on Jan. 8, while people born on the eleventh through twentieth will receive theirs on Jan. 15, and those born on the twentieth through thirty-first will get their payment on Jan. 22, according to the SSA’s schedule.

Social Security payments went out to people on Jan. 3 if they received benefits before May 1997 or if they receive both Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI).

Meanwhile, people who receive only SSI payments will get their February check on Jan. 31. Those recipients already received their January 2025 payment on Dec. 31, 2024, due to the New Year’s Day federal holiday.

When the COLA was announced last fall, the SSA said that retirees should see their benefits increase by about $50 per month on average.

“This year, for the first time, Social Security beneficiaries will receive a newly designed and improved COLA notice that makes it easier for customers to find the information they need most,” the agency said in a statement at the time, adding that it uses “plain and personalized language” and will give the exact dates and dollar amounts.

The COLA is calculated according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, a measure of inflation, for the months of September, August, and July, according to the SSA.

“If there is no increase, there can be no COLA,” it said. The reason for the COLA is to make sure that Social Security recipients’ purchasing power isn’t “eroded by inflation,” the administration said.

The smaller increase for 2025’s Social Security payments is due to the relatively slower pace of inflation, meaning that prices are not increasing as quickly as during the COVID-19 pandemic’s peak.

For payments sent in 2023, Social Security recipients saw an 8.7 percent COLA due to decades-high inflation seen in the third quarter of 2022. A 5.9 percent adjustment was issued for January 2022, also due to then-rapid inflation. For 2024, the increase was just 3.2 percent, according to the SSA.

The all-time highest COLA was in July 1980, when 14.2 percent was received, according to the agency. The second highest, 11.2 percent, happened in July 1981.

Starting from early 2023, the Federal Reserve has increased its interest rates to 5.0–5.5 percent. In its September 2024 meeting, the Federal Reserve’s policy-making Open Market Committee lowered rates by 50 basis points, to a range of 4.75–5.25 percent.

Last month, a monthly report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that consumer prices rose at a faster annual pace in November. The Consumer Price Index saw a 2.7 percent increase over a 12-month period, increasing 0.3 percent for the month.

Around 72.5 million people, including retirees, disabled people, and children, get a monthly Social Security benefit, the agency says.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.