Major Change Affecting Social Security Payments In RI For 2026

Rhode Island Social Security recipients get a 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment in 2026, according to an announcement from agency officials.

The COLA will average $56 a month for the nation’s 70 million retirees and disabled beneficiaries, including 236,877 people in Rhode Island.

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The COLA is financed by payroll taxes collected from workers and their employers. An annual salary cap, slated to increase to $184,500 in 2026, from $176,100 in 2025, limits what higher-income earners contribute.

Recipients received a 2.5% cost-of-living boost in 2025, and a 3.2% increase in their benefits in 2024, after a historically large 8.7% benefit increase in 2023, brought on by record 40-year-high inflation.

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The COLA was to have been announced earlier this month, but was delayed due to the government shutdown. The September Consumer Price Index report is used to set the annual cost-of-living raise, and that was delayed because some Labor Department employees were furloughed.

The Trump administration called some of those workers back to produce the September inflation report. Consumer prices increased 3 percent last month from a year earlier, up from 2.9% in August, as the costs of some imported goods rose while rental prices cooled.

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It’s a smaller increase than many economists had forecast, and will likely encourage the Federal Reserve to cut its key interest rate when it meets next week.

Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices also rose 3 percent, a decline from 3.1% in the previous month. Both figures are above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target.

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The Associated Press contributed reporting.