The special minimum benefit for a worker with 30 years of Social Security coverage will be $1,164.10 a month beginning with the December 2026 increase, according to a Social Security Administration notice. The notice also lists a maximum family benefit of $1,748.30 at that level. It is set to appear in the Federal Register on October 26.
The question most readers have is when the money arrives and how much. The $1,164.10 is the special minimum primary insurance amount, the base figure before any reduction for claiming early, and the SSA notice says Title II benefits rise for December 2026, payable in January 2027. Workers with long, low-wage careers are the ones it is built for, and whether it applies to a given worker depends on how SSA calculates that worker’s record.
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What the December 2026 table shows
The notice carries a table of special minimum amounts by years of coverage. At the top of the scale, a worker with 30 years of coverage has a PIA of $1,164.10 and a family maximum of $1,748.30. The family maximum is the most that can be paid on one worker’s record when a spouse or children also collect.
At the bottom of the range, a worker with 11 years of coverage has a PIA of $55.40 and a family maximum of $84.80. The distance between those two rows, from $55.40 to $1,164.10, shows how heavily the benefit depends on the length of a worker’s low-wage career.
The notice is cataloged as 91 FR 67380, Docket No. SSA-2026-1024, and was signed by Mark Steffensen, SSA’s chief of law, policy and legislative affairs and general counsel. It is the agency’s annual announcement of the cost-of-living increase and the other 2027 figures that depend on it.
Who gets a special minimum benefit?
Congress created the special minimum in 1972 to provide adequate benefits to long-term low earners, according to an SSA program explainer. A worker needs 30 years of coverage for the full amount. A person with 11 to 29 years of coverage can qualify for a prorated special minimum.
Few people are in the group, and the number keeps shrinking. SSA says the number of beneficiaries receiving it fell from about 200,000 in the early 1990s to about 32,100 in 2019, and about 17,500 of those were retired female workers while about 11,000 were retired male workers.
Why the special minimum rarely beats the regular formula
The special minimum is an alternative way to set a worker’s primary insurance amount. SSA explains that wage growth typically exceeds price growth, so newer beneficiaries’ wage-indexed regular PIA is usually higher than the special minimum, and that is why fewer people qualify each year.
The special minimum has grown with prices since 1979, and SSA says it has held constant relative to the poverty threshold. The first full amount, in 1973, was $170 a month, and SSA puts it at $886 a month in 2020. For a low earner with 30 years of coverage in 2017, the explainer shows a special minimum of $832 a month against a regular PIA of $775.
What the December increase means for payments
The same notice sets the 2027 cost-of-living adjustment at 3.6 percent, the figure SSA announced on October 14. The table’s amounts are for benefits for December 2026, payable in January 2027.
The $1,164.10 is the PIA, the starting point, rather than a promise of what lands in a bank account each month. The open question for long-career, low-wage workers is whether their own record falls under the special minimum or the regular formula, since SSA pays the PIA its formulas produce for that record.
Weighing a claiming age for a 30-year low-wage record?
The special minimum sets a starting amount of $1,164.10 for 30 years of coverage, and the claiming age then moves the check up or down from that starting point. A worker who picks an age without running the numbers can lock in a smaller payment for life.
The Social Security Claiming & Family Benefits Kit includes a claiming calculator (Excel) for claiming age, break-even and survivor benefits, along with the 2026 earnings-test rules. The kit does not set the special minimum; it works the age decision once the benefit amount is known.
Run the claiming-age math with the Social Security Claiming & Family Benefits Kit calculator →
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
