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Social Security benefits are projected to rise 2.5% in 2025
The nation’s more than 70 million Social Security recipients may want to temper their expectations of how much more they’ll be getting in 2025. Retirees are looking at an average monthly bump of $48, or an increase of 2.5%, according to projections released on Wednesday.
The 2025 cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, which is based on the rate of inflation, is now forecast to come in below last month’s 2.57% calculation, the Senior Citizens League (TSCL), an advocacy group for older Americans, said. The updated forecast came hours after the government reported that prices rose 2.5% in the 12 months ending in August, as inflation continues to moderate.
The projected increase is not yet official, as the Social Security Administration typically determines the following year’s COLA in mid-October. A 2.5% rise would translate into an average monthly benefit of $1,968, and show up in most recipients’ January benefit check.
Though a 2.5% hike would be less of an increase than the 3.2% received in 2024, it falls roughly within the bounds of the historical norm, which has averaged at about 2.6% over the past two decades. The COLA ran as low as 0.0% in 2010, 2011 and 2016, and as high as 8.7% in 2023.
The Social Security Administration sets its yearly COLA based on inflation during the third quarter, or from July through September. The agency takes the average inflation rate over that period from what’s known as the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, or CPI-W, which tracks spending by working Americans.
If that inflation rate is higher than the same period a year earlier, the COLA is adjusted upward by the difference.
“Ensuring that seniors have enough to feed and house themselves with dignity is a major reason why we advocate for a minimum COLA of 3%,” Shannon Benton, TSCL’s executive director, said in a statement. “Approximately two-thirds of seniors rely on Social Security for more than half of their monthly income, and 28% depend on it entirely,” added Benton, citing TSCL research.
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The Biden administration is beginning to retaliate against China for its sweeping hack of U.S. telecommunications companies earlier this year.
Last week the Commerce Department issued a notice to China Telecom Americas, the U.S. subsidiary of one of China’s largest communications firms, alleging in a preliminary finding that its presence in American telecom networks and cloud services poses a national security risk. The company has 30 days to respond, although the Commerce Department has not said what action it plans to take next.
The New York Times was the first to report the action, which is a direct response to China’s infiltration of telecom networks earlier this year. The China-backed hacking group known as Salt Typhoon penetrated the networks of numerous companies including Verizon, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, a U.S. official familiar with the matter told to CBS News in October.
It’s unclear what the impact on China Telecom would be, since the FCC has already limited China Telecom Americas’ ability to operate in U.S. communications infrastructure. In October 2021, the FCC revoked its license to provide phone services in the US.
The FCC found that China Telecom “is subject to exploitation, influence, and control by the Chinese government and is highly likely to be forced to comply with Chinese government requests without sufficient legal procedures subject to independent judicial oversight.”
China Telecom Americas has not responded to requests for comment.
U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials are continuing to try to learn more about the scope of the hack, which targeted U.S. surveillance capabilities used for operations including wiretaps. U.S. intelligence officials routinely seek court authorization to use telecom systems like those targeted in the breach to collect information for law enforcement or national security probes.
One fear is that the cyberattacks could have allowed the hackers to access information about ongoing U.S. investigations — including those tied to China — through the collection of sensitive data and techniques.
China’s incursions into U.S. critical infrastructure — including water treatment plants and the electrical grid — have lawmakers on Capitol Hill and the incoming Trump administration warning of a more aggressive retaliatory posture going forward.
Rep. Mike Waltz, designated by President-elect Trump to be national security adviser, told Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” Sunday, “We need to start going on offense and start imposing, I think, higher costs and consequences to private actors and nation state actors that continue to steal our data, that continue to spy on us.”
Last month, Rep. Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut and the ranking on the House Intelligence Committee, issued a similar warning.
“We’re not just going to name and shame,” he said on “Face the Nation.” “We are going to go into their networks and give as good as we got.”
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