COLA Ledger

An independent reference — not affiliated with the Social Security Administration. Every figure traced to the government publication that produced it.

The 1980 Social Security COLA — 14.3%

Cost-of-living adjustment, 1980

14.3%

This adjustment took effect with benefits payable for June 1980, so it reached checks from July 1980.

Determined in
1980June-effective
First in a check
July 1980
Comparison quarter
Q1 1980CPI-W 79.4
Base quarter
Q1 1979CPI-W 69.5

SSA’s own table lists this adjustment under 1980, the year it was determined. This site uses the name people search for. Why the two labels disagree.

The CPI-W values behind the 14.3%

Every adjustment is an average of three monthly index readings against an average of three others. These are the six values, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics published them for series CWUR0000SA0 — all items, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted.

CPI-W monthly index values and quarterly averages behind the 1980 adjustment
QuarterMonthCPI-W index
Base — Q1 1979January 197968.700
February 197969.500
March 197970.300
Base quarter average69.5
Comparison — Q1 1980January 198078.300
February 198079.400
March 198080.500
Comparison quarter average79.4

The quarterly averages are rounded to the nearest tenth — the precision the determination-1980 notice specifies — and the percentage increase between them is then rounded to the nearest tenth of a percentage point. That gives 14.3%.

This year cannot be reproduced from the current index — and here is why

SSA computed this COLA from the CPI-W as published on the 1967=100 base. BLS rebased the index to 1982-84=100 in 1988, and the converted one-decimal values now published cannot round-trip the original arithmetic to the final tenth. SSA's published COLA stands; the recomputation below is shown for provenance and differs by at most 0.1 percentage point.

SSA’s published figure of 14.3% is what this page states and what governed the checks. Our recomputation from the rebased series returns 14.2% — a difference of exactly one tenth of a percentage point, and a data-availability boundary rather than a disagreement about the rule. The six affected years are listed in full.

What 14.3% did to a benefit

Monthly benefit amounts are floored to the whole dollar after the adjustment is applied, which is why these figures are not simply the percentage multiplied out.

Effect of the 1980 adjustment on two benchmark monthly benefits
Monthly benefit beforeAfter the adjustmentMonthly increaseOver a year
$1,000$1,143+$143+$1,716
$2,000$2,286+$286+$3,432

The 1980 figures this adjustment set

Most Social Security parameters move with the adjustment or with the national average wage index. These are the committed values for 1980, each traced to the government table it came from.

Committed Social Security and Medicare parameters for 1980
Parameter1980
Maximum earnings subject to Social Security tax$25,900
SSI federal payment rate — individual$238
SSI federal payment rate — couple$357
Earnings needed for one Social Security credit$290
Retirement earnings test — under full retirement age$3,720
Retirement earnings test — year of full retirement age$5,000
Substantial gainful activity — non-blind$300
Substantial gainful activity — blind$417
Trial work period — a service month$75
First PIA bend point (eligibility at 62 this year)$194
Second PIA bend point (eligibility at 62 this year)$1,171

Where to go next

Sources and freshness

Figures effective June 1980. Page figures last verified against the sources above on 10 August 2026. BLS data retrieved 10 August 2026. BLS.gov cannot vouch for data or analyses derived from these data after retrieval. Corrections: the correction log · support@inventum.com.au