October is a rather important month for beneficiaries of the Social Security program. This is because October is the month in which the Social Security Administration (SSA) announces the COLA increase. The COLA, or the Cost of Living Adjustment, is an annual increase implemented to all benefits in order to help curb the effects of year over year inflation. The SSA uses inflation data from the third quarter of the current year measured against the previous year in its calculation, hence the announcement being made in October each year.
The data used to calculate the COLA is taken from a specific subset of the CPI called the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), and it is typically released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on a monthly basis. Due to the current ongoing federal government shutdown, however, the release of the September CPI-W which is required for the COLA calculation will be delayed. This will, in turn, delay the official COLA announcement as well. Here is what you need to know.
Shutdown delays release of inflation data
On September 30th, one day prior to the federal government shutdown, the Department of Labor issued a release stating that it would cease all operations in the event of a shutdown. Since the Department of Labor oversees the Bureau of Labor Statistics, all data collection has also been put on hold until the shutdown ends. As things currently stand, 2,054 of the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s 2,055 employees have been furloughed, and as a result, the scheduled release of all economic data “will likely be delayed if the lapse is prolonged,” as per the Department of Labor’s shutdown plans.
“A government shut down could potentially delay an announcement of the COLA, but remember, the data is for September and that has already been collected,” noted independent Social Security and Medicare policy analyst Mary Johnson. “So the data shouldn’t be skewed.”
Since the shutdown began on October 1st, the inflation data for September will have already been collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CPI-W for each month is usually released by the second week of the new month, and according to the Bureau’s schedule, the September data was meant to be released on October 15th. We are currently about a week away from the day on which the COLA increase would have been announced, however, due to the shutdown, there is no longer is a set date for the announcement and as such, seniors will have to wait in anticipation for a little while longer.
In 2013, a government shutdown had also taken place during the month of October. The COLA announcement that year was initially scheduled for October 16th, however, due to the shutdown which lasted 14 days, the announcement was only made at the end of October. It is also worth noting that whilst the COLA announcement may be delayed now, the actual implementation of the increase will go ahead as scheduled in January 2026.
2026 COLA projections
Based on the CPI-W data of July and August, The Senior Citizen’s League has estimated a COLA of 2.7%, as per a September 11th update from the nonpartisan advocacy group. If this projection is correct, a retiree earning the average benefit amount of around $2,008, will see a modest $54 bump to their checks in the new year.
This would make the 2026 COLA marginally higher than that of 2025 (which came in at 2.5%), however, in a more general sense, even a 2.7% COLA bump is still modest at best, particularly when considering the projected 11.6% increase to Medicare Part B premiums in 2026.
“The 2026 COLA will likely be about average from a historical standpoint. If it comes in at its projected figure of 2.7 percent, the 2026 COLA would be 0.1 percentage points higher than the 2.6 percent average for the last 20 years. What is the lowest COLA of the last 20 years? It’s a tie between 2010 and 2011, which had COLAs of 0.0 percent. The highest? The 8.7 percent COLA was implemented in 2023,” the TSCL wrote.