Social Security 2027 figures tracker: SGA, work credit, earnings test

Every autumn, the Social Security Administration publishes a single notice that mixes two entirely different clocks into one announcement, and most coverage never separates them. The cost-of-living adjustment gets the headlines, because it changes the size of everyone’s check. But the same notice quietly resets a second, larger set of numbers — the earnings needed for a work credit, the earnings that count as substantial gainful activity for someone on disability, the trial work period line, the retirement earnings test, the formula that turns a lifetime of wages into a benefit, and the ceiling on taxable earnings — and none of those move on the COLA at all. They move on the national average wage index (AWI), a slower-moving, wage-based series published a full year behind the price index that sets the COLA.

Two clocks, one announcement

The confusion starts because the Social Security Administration bundles both sets of numbers into a single annual notice, timed to the same week each fall. But the inputs are unrelated series, published on different schedules, and mixing them up produces wrong projections. This site’s own 2027 COLA tracker covers the CPI-W side in detail; this page is the AWI side.

The AWI itself runs two years behind the figures it sets: the 2026 amounts above were built from the national average wage index for 2024 ($69,846.57), which the Social Security Administration only finished tabulating and published in November 2025. The 2027 amounts will be built from the AWI for 2025, which will not be published until the Administration’s next annual notice, expected around early November 2026. That is the entire reason this page has to work in scenarios rather than a single number.

The control: reproducing every 2026 figure from the formula

Before projecting anything, it is worth checking that the formula actually reproduces the numbers the Social Security Administration already confirmed for 2026. Each figure below comes from the SSA’s own Federal Register notice (90 FR 49047), which states both the formula and the unrounded result.

Every row lands exactly on the confirmed 2026 figure once the statutory rounding rule for that item is applied — nearest $10 for the quarter of coverage, SGA, trial work period and earnings test amounts; nearest $1 for the PIA and family-maximum bend points; nearest $300 for the wage base and old-law base. That match is the whole basis for trusting the same formula to project 2027, once a 2025 wage index is assumed.

The AWI 2025 scenarios

The 2025 wage index will not exist as an official figure until the Social Security Administration publishes it. This page borrows its central scenario directly from this site’s own 2027 wage base projection, which cites the Social Security Trustees’ 2026 report projecting an OASDI wage base of $190,200 under intermediate, best-estimate assumptions. Running that $190,200 figure backward through the wage-base formula pins down the AWI level it implies: an unrounded value between $190,050 and $190,350 (the range that rounds to $190,200) requires a 2025 wage index between $71,928.66 and $72,042.20 — growth of roughly 2.98% to 3.14% over the 2024 index of $69,846.57. This page uses the midpoint, $71,985, an implied growth rate of about 3.06%, as its central scenario.

That central case is deliberately conservative — the Trustees’ own methodology runs cautious, and as the wage base page notes, actual wage growth has recently outpaced it: the 2023-to-2024 AWI increase, per the same Federal Register notice, was 4.84%. To capture that possibility, this page adds two faster-growth scenarios: AWI up 3.5% and AWI up 5.5% over the 2024 figure of $69,846.57, giving 2025 wage indexes of $72,291 and $73,688 respectively. None of the three is a forecast this site is making independently — the central case is borrowed intact from the wage base page, and the two alternates simply bracket it with the same kind of upside the wage base page already flags.

The 2027 projections

Applying each scenario’s assumed 2025 wage index through the same formulas verified above:

The central column reproducing exactly $190,200 for the wage base is not a coincidence — that figure is where the central AWI scenario was derived from in the first place, so it is a consistency check on the arithmetic rather than an independent confirmation.

Working the quarter of coverage by hand under the central scenario: $250 × (71,985 ÷ 9,226.48) = 250 × 7.8021 = $1,950.51, which rounds to the nearest $10, landing at $1,950. Under the +3.5% scenario, the same formula gives 250 × (72,291 ÷ 9,226.48) = 250 × 7.8352 = $1,958.80, rounding up to $1,960. Under +5.5%, 250 × (73,688 ÷ 9,226.48) = 250 × 7.9866 = $1,996.65, rounding up to $2,000.

The non-blind SGA line moves the same way, and it is worth spelling out what a $60 move means in practice. Someone earning exactly the 2026 non-blind SGA threshold, $1,690 a month, would already be over the line if that threshold stayed frozen. Under the central 2027 projection of $1,750, that same $1,690 in monthly earnings would sit $60 below the new line — an increase of 60 ÷ 1,690, or about 3.55%, close to the roughly 3.1% AWI growth assumed, with the difference explained by the $10 rounding step. Nothing about a person’s disability status changes; only the earnings line they are measured against does.

The other clock: SSI federal benefit rate under COLA scenarios

The SSI federal benefit rate (FBR) does not touch the AWI at all — it moves with the same COLA that sets Social Security checks, under 42 U.S.C. § 1382f. The Federal Register notice gives the unrounded 2026 annual FBR figures before their statutory rounding to the next lower multiple of $12: $11,929.46 for an individual, $17,892.21 for an eligible individual with an eligible spouse, and $5,978.41 for an essential person. Applying a COLA to those unrounded figures, then rounding down to $12 and dividing by 12, projects the 2027 monthly rates:

The 3.2%–3.5% band, centered on 3.4%, comes from the August 2026 CPI-W reading of 328.481 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, series CWUR0000SA0), which this site’s own COLA tracker uses as its own August update. Averaging that reading with July’s 327.104 against the fixed Q3-2025 base of 317.265 shows why the band sits where it does: if September simply repeats August’s 328.481, the Q3 2026 average comes to 328.022, a COLA of 3.39%, rounding to 3.4%. A softer September of around 326.67 would pull the quarter average down to a 3.2% COLA; a stronger one near 329.52 would push it to 3.5%. September has not published yet, so all three remain live.

Who this affects

A worker with a disability earning close to the SGA line. The gap between $1,690 and a projected $1,750 to $1,790 a month is the difference between a monthly paycheck that Social Security counts as evidence of substantial gainful activity and one that does not — a determination that can affect eligibility for disability benefits regardless of the severity of the underlying condition.

An early retiree still working while collecting benefits. Someone earning $30,000 in 2026, below their normal retirement age all year, is measured against the $24,480 lower annual exempt amount: the excess is $30,000 − $24,480 = $5,520, and Social Security withholds $1 for every $2 over that line, or $5,520 ÷ 2 = $2,760 withheld across the year. Under the central 2027 projection, the same $30,000 salary is measured against a $25,200 exempt amount instead: excess of $30,000 − $25,200 = $4,800, withholding of $4,800 ÷ 2 = $2,400 — $360 less withheld for identical earnings, purely because the exempt amount moved. None of that withheld money disappears; Social Security recalculates the benefit upward once normal retirement age is reached to credit back the months that were withheld, a mechanism covered in the 2026 earnings test guide.

Anyone approaching the quarter-of-coverage threshold for insured status. Earning $1,890 in a calendar quarter under 2026 rules credits one quarter of coverage toward the 40 quarters generally required for retirement insured status; a projected 2027 figure of $1,950 to $2,000 raises that bar slightly, a detail that matters most to workers with intermittent earnings history who are close to qualifying.

What is known, what is pending

The first 2027 COLA payment date and the net increase after the Medicare Part B premium depend on the same October–November sequence and are tracked separately. None of the wage-indexed figures on this page interact with payroll withholding directly the way FICA taxes do, but the wage base above is the ceiling on the 6.2% Social Security portion of that withholding, so the two pages move together once the 2025 AWI is official. For the parallel set of IRS figures that key off a different BLS release entirely, see the 2027 IRS inflation adjustments tracker; readers who want to see the wage-indexed and COLA-indexed 2027 numbers applied to an actual benefit rather than shown as thresholds can run both through the 2027 Social Security check calculator.

This page is updated the day the SSA publishes the 2027 figures.

Sources

• Social Security Administration — Cost-of-Living Increase and Other Determinations for 2026, 90 FR 49047 (Nov. 3, 2025) — formulas, unrounded and official 2026 figures for the quarter of coverage, SGA, trial work period, earnings test, bend points, family maximum, wage base, old-law base and SSI federal benefit rate.
• 42 U.S.C. § 413(d) — Quarter of coverage — statutory formula and wage-index ratio for the quarter-of-coverage amount.
• 42 U.S.C. § 415(a)(1)(B) and (i) — PIA bend points and cost-of-living adjustments — bend-point indexing formula and the COLA mechanism.
• 42 U.S.C. § 403(f)(8) — Retirement earnings test exempt amounts — formula and rounding for the lower and higher exempt amounts.
• 20 CFR § 404.1574 — Substantial gainful activity earnings guidelines — indexing formula for the non-blind SGA amount.
• 42 U.S.C. § 1382f — SSI cost-of-living adjustments — statutory basis for indexing the SSI federal benefit rate to the COLA rather than the AWI.
• Bureau of Labor Statistics — CPI-W, series CWUR0000SA0 — July 2026 (327.104) and August 2026 (328.481) readings used for the COLA-scenario band.
• Social Security Trustees — 2026 OASDI Trustees Report — source of the $190,200 intermediate wage-base projection this page’s central AWI scenario is derived from, as cited on the 2027 wage base projection page.