"Is this year's COLA good or bad?" I get asked some version of that every October, and honestly, the number means nothing in isolation. A 3.2 percent COLA sounds decent until you learn the 10-year average is 3.1 percent, which makes it perfectly ordinary. Context is the whole game. So I sat down with the full SSA history, all 51 COLAs from 1976 to 2026, and computed the averages people actually ask about.
The headline averages
| Period | Average COLA | How it compares |
|---|---|---|
| Last 10 years (2017-2026) | 3.1% | The 2026 COLA of 2.8% sits just below it |
| Last 20 years (2007-2026) | 2.6% | A full generation of mostly tame inflation |
| 2015-2024 (Motley Fool) | 2.8% | The 2024 COLA of 3.2% beat it |
My 20-year figure lands exactly on the number the Motley Fool reported using SSA data, which was a nice confirmation I had the dataset right: 2.6 percent. And the 10-year average of 3.1 percent matches what Fast Company and others have cited for the trailing decade. When independent outlets and your own spreadsheet agree, you can trust the table.
Decade by decade: where the averages really tell a story
| Decade | Average COLA | The story |
|---|---|---|
| 1980s (1980-1989) | 6.2% | The inflation era: 14.3% in 1981, 11.2% in 1982 |
| 1990s (1990-1999) | 3.1% | Steady, boring, exactly like the last decade |
| 2000s (2000-2009) | 3.0% | Capped by a 5.8% spike in 2009 |
| 2010s (2010-2019) | 1.4% | The lost decade: three zeros, nothing above 3.6% |
| 2020s so far (2020-2026) | 3.7% | The 8.7% of 2023 drags the whole decade up |
Look at the 2010s for a second. A 1.4 percent average across ten years. Three years with no COLA at all (2010, 2011, 2016), and the biggest increase of the decade was just 3.6 percent in 2012. Anyone who retired in 2010 lived through a decade where their check barely moved, and no average published today captures how that felt at the grocery store. Then 2022 and 2023 delivered 5.9 and 8.7 percent, the two largest COLAs in 40 years, and suddenly everyone was an inflation expert.
Why averages mislead (and what to use instead)
Here is my honest opinion after staring at this dataset for a while: the average COLA is a trivia answer, not a planning tool. Two reasons.
First, COLAs compound. A 1.4 percent average decade followed by a 3.7 percent stretch does not feel like a 2.6 percent average decade, because the dollars stack differently. The only number that captures your personal history is the cumulative product, which is why I built the compounding calculator on the main tool page. Run your own retirement year through it instead of quoting an average.
Second, the distribution is lopsided. Over 51 years, the median COLA is 2.8 percent, but the range runs from 0 to 14.3 percent. Averages get yanked around by outliers like 1981 and 2023. If you are trying to guess next year's COLA, the honest answer is that nobody knows until the September CPI-W prints, and the historical average is barely better than a coin flip with a slight upward bias.
Worked example: the 2026 COLA versus history
The 2026 COLA is 2.8 percent. Against the last 10 years (3.1 percent average), it is a touch below normal. Against the last 20 years (2.6 percent), it is a touch above. Against the 2010s (1.4 percent), it would have been the second biggest of the decade. Against the 1980s (6.2 percent), it looks tiny. Same number, four different verdicts. This is why I always pull the full table instead of trusting a single average.
A final practical note: if you are budgeting for retirement, planners often suggest stress-testing against the low decades, not the average. A retiree who started drawing benefits in 2010 got a decade of nearly flat checks, and no 20-year average would have warned them. The table on the main tool page lets you run any year range you like, which beats any single summary number I could give you.
Explore the full 1976-2026 COLA dataset
The free tool has every year in a sortable table, a chart of the whole series, a CSV download if you want to do your own math, and the compounding calculator. All figures come from the Social Security Administration's COLA table.
Sources: U.S. Social Security Administration COLA table; the Motley Fool, "Social Security Benefits Got a 3.2% COLA in 2024. Here's How That Compares to the 10-Year Average COLA"; Fast Company, "Social Security 2027 update." Averages computed from the SSA series; figures verified October 2026.