The Social Security Administration is due this month to calculate how much to raise benefits for next year based on inflation. But the data it needs to run the numbers is stuck in another federal office emptied during the shutdown.
The Department of Labor furloughed more than 2,000 workers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to the department’s shutdown contingency plan. That leaves just one employee working less than two weeks before the BLS is scheduled to release the September Consumer Price Index data, which measures average cost-of-living changes.
If the shutdown continues and more workers aren’t brought back within a month, the Social Security Administration’s work of calculating the percentage adjustment and notifying recipients of their benefit increases could be delayed, former senior officials and social insurance advocates told NOTUS.