It has been announced that unless the inflation report for the US government drops some kind of unprecedented surprise, one could ideally expect the 2024 Social Security cost of living adjustment, or COLA, to be somewhere in the region of 3.2%. That estimate was based on the latest Consumer Price Index readings made by the Department of Labor.
According to the data shown by the Labor Department, it was understood that the CPI Index for Urban Wage Earners as well as Clerical Workers rose by 3.4% in August, up from about 2.6% in July, as reported by The Motley Fool. The CPI-W is the index that is mostly used to calculate the annual Social Security adjustments.
COLA Could Be Made After Calculating The CPI-W
The CPI-W changes for the months of July, August, and September are usually added together and then averaged, after which they are compared with the Q3 average from a year before. The difference in the percentage is the exact amount of COLA, which would be payable in Social Security checks that begin in January 2024. The higher CPI-W reading in August caused The Senior Citizens League, which was a non-partisan seniors advocacy group- something that led to the increase in the 2024 COLA estimate to 3.2% from earlier projects of about 3.0%.
A COLA of about 3.2% would completely raise the average monthly retiree benefit by about $59. That, for the average layman, would be a huge drop from the COLA of this year at 8.7%, which pushed the average monthly check up by about $146. The COLA for 2022 was 5.9%, and the official 2024 cost-of-living adjustment is expected to be announced on the 12th of October when the inflation numbers for September come out.
