More than seventy million Americans rely on monthly Social Security checks to help pay for regular expenses such as food or housing. The average benefit amount received by a retiree surpassed a huge benchmark for the month of May for the first time in the almost century-long history of the program.
For the month of May, the average Social Security benefit check for retirees passed the $2,000 threshold, according to the Monthly Statistical Snapshot that is released by the Social Security Administration (SSA).
Social Security retiree benefit average hits all time high
This May, a retired beneficiary of Social Security received a benefit check for $2,002.39 on average. There is nothing average about this average figure, however, as it is the first time that the average retirement benefit has surpassed the $2,000 threshold. For the same period in 2024, the average retirement benefit stood at $1,916 which equates to a 4.5% increase for 2025. According to the SSA’s Monthly Statistical Snapshot, retired workers make up 75.9 percent of the total beneficiaries.
“No other federal agency has a greater impact on the American people,” says Public Affairs Specialist Sue Denny as per a recent post on the Social Security blog.
There are various factors that contributed towards the rise in the average retired worker benefit amount. The most consistent increase faced by Social Security benefits would be the Cost of Living Adjustment, or COLA. The COLA is an annual increase that is calculated using data from the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). The COLA is added to the Social Security benefit amount each year to help beneficiaries keep up with the effects of inflation by maintaining the purchasing power of their monthly checks.
However, a 4.5% increase in the average benefit amount over a period of one year is quite significant. This begs the question: Why are Social Security checks growing at this rate?
What caused the year by year 2.5% increase?
In October 2024, the Cost of Living Adjustment for 2025 was announced to be 2.5% and as a result, beneficiaries received a small bump in their benefit amounts starting in January. This COLA increase, however, was not the sole reason behind the increase in the average benefit for retired workers.
At the beginning of the year, former President Joe Biden signed into effect the Social Security Fairness Act which effectively repealed two provisions that had previously been put in place — namely, the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO).
The WEP and the GPO mainly impacted public sector employees such as teachers, firefighters, certain federal employees, and police officers. These individuals had their benefits reduced due to the provisions of the WEP or the GPO as they had received pensions from their employers. Subsequently, the Social Security Fairness Act eliminated these provisions and as a result, the impacted cohort will now have their full benefits restored to them.
This means that these individuals will be seeing significant increases to their monthly benefit amounts. On average, the individuals impacted by the Social Security Fairness Act will be receiving an additional $360 in their monthly benefits. However, some of the impacted public sectors workers are eligible to receive an increase of up to $1,000 to their monthly benefit check.
Since $2,002 is only the average benefit amount for retired workers, some beneficiaries are receiving a higher figure than this each month. The full retirement age plays a major role in how much higher or lower than the average your benefit amount works out to. In 2025, claiming at age 62, the highest monthly benefit stands at $2,831. The full retirement age, however, is 67. Furthermore, for 2025, seniors who claim at age 70 will receive $5,108 monthly, which is the highest benefit figure paid by the agency.