The 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to military retirement pay, Survivor Benefit Plan payments, VA disability compensation, and Social Security checks will reach beneficiaries’ bank accounts in late December (or early January), but the path toward the following year’s increase is off to a rocky start.

The COLA stems from monthly inflation reports tracking the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). The higher this figure rests at the close of the fiscal year, the higher the increase for beneficiaries. So while the October 2025 CPI-W figure would provide some insight into early inflation trends, it’s far from a reliable indicator of a future COLA increase.

Which is good … because it likely won’t exist.

The Nov. 13 report announcing that figure was delayed and then canceled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which published a list of revised report release dates in the days following the shutdown. Survey data used to set CPIs was not collected during the funding lapse, and “BLS is unable to retroactively collect these data,” according to the web post.

This means the first indicator of future COLA levels will come Dec. 18, with the release of the November 2025 inflation data. As in previous years, the adjustment will be set by comparing an average of the July, August, and September 2026 CPI-W figures with the 2025 average of those months – the percentage increase, rounded up to the nearest tenth, serves as the annual adjustment. If there is no increase or the 2026 figures are below the 2025 baseline, payments would remain at the previous year’s levels.

Why MOAA Tracks COLA Releases

The monthly releases offer a window into potential retirement-pay increases and can be a small piece of a wider financial strategy for those receiving COLA-attached compensation. But tracking the figure has a larger purpose, especially in years where projections are higher than average.

COLA has come under threat as a way to lower federal spending, with legislation introduced that would either change how COLA is calculated or eliminate the adjustment entirely for some beneficiaries, to include military retirees.

More than four decades ago, advocates across the military and veteran communities – including MOAA, then known as The Retired Officers Association – formed The Military Coalition to successfully reverse plans to eliminate COLA from military retired pay. MOAA’s testimony was also key to reversing “COLA Minus 1 Percent” – a plan in the 2010s set to reduce the value of a military retiree’s pay by tens of thousands of dollars before many even reached traditional retirement age.

Those threats may be in the past, but the Congressional Budget Office regularly includes a proposal to reindex COLA as part of its options for lawmakers to reduce the deficit. Linking pay increases for Social Security recipients, military retirees, and others to a different measurement – known as “Chained CPI” – would save nearly $280 billion over 10 years … but would severely weaken the purchasing power of service-earned retiree, survivor, and disability compensation.

Protecting the value of your earned benefits remains a core part of MOAA’s mission. That includes ensuring these benefits retain their value over time, whether that means maintaining access to high quality health care after service or ensuring retiree and survivor pay keep up with inflation.

Stay up to date with COLA via our COLA Watch page, and register at our Legislative Action Center to keep up with all of MOAA’s legislative priorities.