After two consecutive years of record increases, the annual cost-of-living adjustment for federal retirees will start to come back to earth in 2024, as federal employee groups revive their effort to end the two-tiered system for calculating the annual annuity increase.
The Social Security Administration on Thursday announced that Social Security beneficiaries will receive a 3.2% cost-of-living adjustment in January, a decrease from the four-decade high 8.7% imposed in 2023 and 5.9% in 2022, albeit still higher than most years in recent memory. SSA calculates the annual increase in annuities based on the annual change in the third quarter consumer price index for workers.
Federal retirees enrolled in the Civil Service Retirement System also will receive a 3.2% annuity increase, but former feds who are part of the newer Federal Employees Retirement System, which came into being in the 1980s along with the 401(k)-style Thrift Savings Plan, will receive only a 2.2% cost-of-living adjustment.