The waiting is over. Benefit checks will be going up by 8.7% in January.
The CPI-W, which is the index used to calculate the COLA, rose by 8.5% over the last 12 months to an index level of 291.854 (1982–84 = 100). In calculating the COLA, SSA takes the average of the indexes for July, August, and September (291.901), subtracts the average for the same period last year (268.421) and calculates the percentage gain, which was 8.747%.
SSA made it clear in its press release that it will not be necessary to call SSA: beneficiaries will be notified by mail in early December what their new benefit amount will be. To get the information a bit faster, people can go to their Social Security account and sign up for email or text notifications. They will get an alert when their COLA announcement has been posted as a message to their account.