If you’re on Social Security, you’re probably used to small changes to the size of your benefit checks every year due to cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs). But major changes to those benefits are pretty rare. That’s what makes the recently enacted Social Security Fairness Act such big news.
The law, which former President Biden signed in January, canceled two key Social Security provisions that reduced the benefits owed to 3.2 million Americans. That group includes retired workers, spouses, and surviving family members of deceased workers. Some will see their checks increase by more than $1,000 per month. However, others won’t notice any difference at all.
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You may already know whether the new law affects you. But if not, here’s how you can tell.
Only select beneficiaries qualify
The Social Security Fairness Act eliminated the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO). The WEP reduced Social Security benefits for retired workers receiving pensions from employers that didn’t withhold Social Security taxes. The GPO did basically the same thing for the spouses of the workers affected by the WEP.
Government workers are the group most likely to be affected. This includes police officers, teachers, firefighters, and state and local government employees. However, not everyone who worked in one of these professions will see extra money under the Social Security Fairness Act. About 72% of state and local public employees are working in positions where their employer pays into Social Security on their behalf, so they won’t see a benefit hike because their benefits were never dialed down under the formulas of the WEP or GPO.
Those who are affected may have already received a notice from the Social Security Administration highlighting the upcoming changes. If you haven’t, this could mean that either you won’t see a benefit increase or that yours might take the agency some additional time to process.
What to expect in the coming weeks
The Social Security Fairness Act increases benefits for affected workers. The majority of these workers should notice the change beginning with their April 2025 payment. The size of the increase depends on your past earnings history.
Workers affected by the WEP will see an average increase of $360 per month. Spousal beneficiaries will see their checks increase by $700 per month on average. And widow and widower beneficiaries will receive the largest average increases — $1,190 per month.
The Social Security Fairness Act applies to all benefits payable after December 2023, so if you’ve been receiving checks for a while, in addition to larger checks in the future, you may be entitled to a one-time retroactive payment. The Social Security Administration expects to distribute most of those by the end of this month. The money should go to the bank account you currently have on file for direct deposit of your regular benefit checks. If you’d like to choose a different account for your retroactive payment, you can contact the Social Security Administration directly or sign into your my Social Security account online to make the change yourself.
When calculating the sizes of the adjustments owed to people, there are some complex cases the Social Security Administration hasn’t been able to automate. If yours is among them, you may have to wait up to one year for your benefit adjustment and retroactive payment, as a government employee will have to manually process the update.
The Social Security Administration asks that beneficiaries wait until April before reaching out with questions regarding their retroactive payments. It also requests they wait until after they’ve received their April payments before contacting it with questions about their new monthly benefit amounts.
