The Social Security Administration marked its 91st anniversary on August 14 with a data dump most agencies would rather not publish: exactly how long people are waiting when they show up in person. This year, for the first time in a while, the numbers moved in the visitor’s favor. Nearly 25 million people walked into…

Every fall, one government release date determines how much bigger — or smaller — the raise will be for the roughly 75 million Americans who collect Social Security or Supplemental Security Income. That date isn’t set by the Social Security Administration deciding when it feels ready. It’s locked to a Bureau of Labor Statistics data…

Most Supplemental Security Income recipients see their monthly check shrink as soon as they report any earnings. One group gets a far bigger cushion: full-time students who are still young enough, and still enrolled, to qualify for Social Security’s largest earnings exclusion. In 2026, that exclusion lets a qualifying student keep several thousand dollars of…

Two years ago, a Social Security overpayment notice usually meant writing a check or standing in line for a money order. Today, according to the agency’s own numbers, most people just log in and pay instead. Social Security says more than four out of five people who owe money back to the program are now…

More than eight million Americans currently receive Social Security Disability Insurance, and the agency says the wait to find out whether a new claim is approved has gotten meaningfully shorter. In a blog post marking the program’s 70th anniversary, the Social Security Administration reported that initial disability decisions are now arriving 40 days faster than…

A person who receives Social Security disability benefits and wants to try going back to work has a specific number to watch every month in 2026: $1,210. That figure decides whether a working month counts against the nine months SSA allows a beneficiary to test their ability to work without immediately losing benefits. It rose…

A federal notice that ran on August 31, 2026 doesn’t change how any current SSI check is calculated, but it does something federal agencies rarely bother to do out loud: it formally retires a piece of guidance from 1990 that hasn’t matched the actual rule for nearly two years. The notice tells SSA staff and…

Supplemental Security Income gets described in most coverage as a flat monthly check, but the number that actually lands in a recipient’s bank account depends on a formula most people never see. The Social Security Administration’s newest accounting of the program, covering January 2026, breaks that formula down person by person rather than reporting a…

For someone receiving Social Security disability benefits and trying to return to work, one number decides whether a paycheck is safe and another decides whether it’s a threat to the whole benefit. Social Security’s 2026 update raised both: a non-blind worker who earns more than $1,690 in a month can be found capable of substantial…

A worker who crosses $184,500 in wages sometime this year will notice a line item on their pay stub change: the 6.2 percent Social Security tax that had been coming out of every paycheck simply stops. Social Security raised that wage ceiling by $8,400 for 2026, the biggest single-year dollar increase in the program’s history,…