The average Social Security check for all 67 million beneficiaries in 2024 would be:
Every year since 2002, national pollster Gallup has measured retirees’ dependence on Social Security income. Across all 22 surveys, 80% to 90% of retirees at the time said they relied on monthly payments to cover at least some of their costs.
Given how important Social Security is to the financial well-being of our nation’s aging workforce, disabled workers, and surviving beneficiaries, perhaps no event is more widely anticipated than the announcement of cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) each October.
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Social Security beneficiaries can still enjoy a higher-than-average COLA in 2024.
COLA is best known as a social security mechanism that accounts for inflation, or the rise in prices of goods and services. If the price of the basket of goods and services that retired workers typically purchase increases, then in an ideal world Social Security benefits would increase by a corresponding amount to ensure that beneficiaries do not lose purchasing power. COLA is a tool that takes into account price changes that beneficiaries are experiencing and adjusts benefits each year accordingly.
Since 1975, the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage and White Collar Workers (CPI-W) has been used as the program’s measure of inflation. Compare the average CPI-W number for the third quarter of this year (July to September) with the average CPI-W number for the third quarter of the previous year to determine whether the cost-of-living adjustment will pass. In the coming year. If the current year’s average figure is higher than the comparable period in the previous year, inflation has occurred and all beneficiaries should receive a raise.
The 66 million people receiving Social Security benefits in 2023 enjoyed a historically high 8.7% COLA. On a percentage basis, this is the largest year-over-year increase in benefits in over 40 years.
All 67 million Social Security beneficiaries will still receive a higher-than-average COLA in 2024. Of course, it will not be on the same scale as the historical increase in 2023. The 3.2% cost-of-living adjustment passed in 2024 is slightly higher than the COLA. The average COLA over the past 20 years is 2.6%.
How much will the average Social Security recipient take home each month in 2024?
It’s one thing to throw around percentages, but it’s another to get to the heart of what these increases actually mean in nominal dollar terms for the average beneficiary.
Before we start calculating, we want to tell you that we will be making educated guesses. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has not released average monthly benefits for all 67 million beneficiaries in January 2024. That means I will do some calculations to determine your average monthly Social Security check. To all beneficiaries.
The first thing to note is that retired workers, disabled workers, and survivor beneficiaries are regularly added to the current beneficiary list. These new enrollees tend to see their average payouts increase gradually on a monthly basis.
From January 2023 to November 2023, the average monthly check for all beneficiaries increased from $1,691.53 reported by SSA to $1,710.78. This difference of $19.25 divided by 10 (representing a 10-month difference) corresponds to an organic increase of approximately $1.93 per month. Therefore, the average payment was expected to increase to $1,712.71 in December 2023 before the 3.2% COLA is taken into account.
A 3.2% cost-of-living adjustment for $1,712.71 equates to an increase of $54.81 per check. This means that 67 million Social Security beneficiaries would have received an estimated average monthly benefit of $1,767.52 in 2024, or about $21,210 per year.
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The average payments for retired workers, disabled workers, and survivor beneficiaries in 2024 are as follows:
However, the average monthly benefit can vary greatly depending on the type of beneficiary receiving the payment. Let’s take a closer look at the average Social Security checks for each of the program’s three core categories: retired workers, disabled workers, and surviving beneficiaries.
America’s premier retirement program was enacted into law in 1935 to protect aging workers who could no longer support themselves. As of November 2023, more than 50 million retired workers were receiving monthly checks. The average monthly benefit for all retired workers is expected to increase from $59 per month to $1,907 by January 2024, according to SSA estimates released in mid-October. Retired workers receive the highest average monthly benefit of Social Security’s three core benefits. Beneficiary Category.
As of November, about 7.4 million workers were receiving long-term disability benefits. Taking the 3.2% COLA into account, the average monthly check cost for disabled workers is expected to increase from $48 to $1,537 in 2024, according to SSA estimates.
Finally, in November, just over 5.8 million people received survivor benefits. This primarily includes non-disabled people and disabled widows, as well as eligible children of deceased workers. SSA’s “2024 COLA Fact Sheet” does not provide estimates for monthly payments to surviving beneficiaries, but my calculations show an average increase of $46.59 in 2024, to about $1,502 per month.
You may have noticed that the number of beneficiaries in these three categories does not reach 67 million. That’s because there are more than 2 million spouses and children receiving retirement benefits, and more than 1 million children receiving disabled worker benefits. It is omitted to simplify calculations.
But no matter which category Social Security recipients fall into, 2024 marks another year of above-average cost-of-living adjustments.
