Social Security COLA to drop significantly in 2024, senior group predicts
by Michael Bartiromo - 05/14/23 11:00 AM ET
(NEXSTAR) – Social Security recipients shouldn’t expect 2024’s cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to be as significant as 2023’s, despite warnings that beneficiaries are losing their purchasing power.
“The 2024 COLA could be around 3.1%,” Mary Johnson, the Social Security and Medicare policy analyst for the Senior Citizens League, said in a news release issued last week.
The Senior Citizen’s League (TSCL), a nonpartisan senior advocacy group, has for years based its estimations of upcoming COLA increases on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and specifically its Consumer Price Indexes — the same data which is ultimately used by the Social Security Administration to determine its annual COLA increases.
The 2023 increase, at 8.7%, was the largest COLA increase in over four decades, partially thanks to supply-chain disruptions which fueled soaring inflation amid the pandemic. But analysts with TSCL are worried that cooling inflation — or at least the appearance of cooling inflation — will result in a smaller 2024 COLA increase that could have detrimental effects on beneficiaries.
“Inflation is moderating, but a lower inflation rate has not necessarily meant that prices have decreased,” TSCL writes in a study published earlier this month, in which the group argues that “key items” remain at “stubbornly high” prices.
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https://thehill.com/homenews/nexstar_media_wire/4001999-social-security-cola-to-drop-significantly-in-2024-senior-group-predicts/
