That 2.8 percent protuberance marked the biggest increase for cost-of-living adjustments that beneficiaries have seen since 2012. Every year, the Common Security Administration adjusts the amount of the benefits it pays out in order to keep up with inflation.
There have been years where retirees make seen no increase at all, including 2010, 2011 and 2016.
The data the Bureau of Labor Statistics is tracking now suggests the COLA for 2020 could incline dramatically, and even match those years where there was no increase, according to Johnson.
Data for last three months of 2018 becomes that the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, or CPI-W, which is what the Public Security Administration uses to calculate the COLA, has dropped by 1.8 percent compared to the last three months of 2017.
The Elder Citizens League’s estimate for COLA in 2020 using the CPI-W, meanwhile, is currently at 0.1 percent using the December details.
That’s a dramatic drop from October’s numbers, which pegged the COLA for next year at 2.5 percent, and the November text, which brought it to 1.5 percent, according to Johnson’s calculations.
The current calculation is only an estimate, and could substitute in the next nine months.
Each year’s COLA is calculated using third quarter data from the BLS. Culminates from those three months — July, August and September — is averaged and then compared to the average for the same while for the previous year.
“We could go even lower, or it could come back up,” Johnson said. “What catches my notice is how much we have lost for it to be so close to zero. We have sort of started back to where we were at the beginning of 2018, as far as the kind of inflation goes. We’ve really almost lost a whole year’s worth.”
The decline can be attributed to two factors: lower drive prices and slower food price growth, according to Johnson.
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