Is Social Security running out? What the 2026 Trustees Report says

Few retirement questions come up as often as this one: will Social Security still be there? Every year the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees answer it in an official report to Congress, and every year the headlines turn the answer into "Social Security is going broke." The report itself says something more precise, and for people who are retired or close to it, the precise version matters.

The short answer from the 2026 reports: Social Security is not running out of money, but its main trust fund is running out of reserves. Under the Trustees' best estimates, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund, which pays retirement and survivor benefits, can pay 100% of scheduled benefits until the fourth quarter of 2032. After that, the payroll taxes and other income still coming in would be enough to pay 78% of scheduled benefits, unless Congress changes the law first.

This guide walks through what the 2026 Trustees Reports actually project, what "depleted" means and what it does not mean, where the money comes from, why the outlook got worse this year, and what the reports say about Medicare.

The key dates in the 2026 reports

There are four trust funds, and each has its own outlook. The Trustees summarize them this way, using their intermediate, or best estimate, assumptions, which were set in February 2026:

The combined figure is the one most often quoted. The Trustees point out that the two Social Security funds are legally separate and could not actually be combined without a change in the law, but the combined projection is frequently used to show the status of the program as a whole.

Compared with the 2025 reports, the OASI date moved one quarter earlier, from the first quarter of 2033 to the fourth quarter of 2032. The combined date stayed in the third quarter of 2034. The Medicare hospital fund date also moved one quarter earlier, from the third to the second quarter of 2033.

What "depleted" means, and what it does not

A trust fund is depleted when its reserves can no longer cover scheduled benefits in full and on time. It is not the same as the program shutting down. Workers and employers keep paying payroll taxes, and that income keeps flowing in. What changes is that the program can only pay out what comes in, because, in the Trustees' words, under current law the programs are not allowed to pay any benefits beyond what is available from annual income and trust fund reserves, and they cannot borrow.

That is where the 78% and 83% come from: they are the share of total scheduled benefits that continuing income could pay at the time of depletion. The share is not fixed. For OASI the report projects it falls to 62% by 2100; on the combined basis, 83% at depletion declines to 65% by 2100. The report gives these as shares of total scheduled benefits; it does not say how a shortfall would be applied to individual checks, because that would be up to Congress.

For a sense of scale only, here is what those percentages are of a hypothetical $2,000 monthly scheduled benefit:

The Trustees are direct about the odds of avoiding depletion without a change in the law. Their summary says the actuarial deficit in both OASI and HI is large enough that averting trust fund depletion under current-law financing is extremely unlikely.

What the trust funds are

The trust funds are accounts established by Congress and managed by the Secretary of the Treasury. When a program takes in more than it pays out, the surplus builds up as reserves; when it pays out more than it takes in, the reserves are drawn down. Each fund can pay only the types of benefits the law allows it to pay.

The reserves are not cash in a vault. By law the Trustees must invest all excess funds in interest-bearing securities backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Treasury currently invests them in special non-marketable U.S. Government securities that earn interest equal to average rates on marketable securities. The balance in each fund is the accumulated value, with interest, of every past annual surplus and deficit.

At the end of 2025 the reserves were $2,338.3 billion in OASI, $223.0 billion in DI, $255.7 billion in HI and $168.4 billion in SMI. OASI reserves fell by $200.0 billion during 2025. The Trustees note that OASI has been drawing down its reserves to pay benefits since 2021.

Where Social Security's money comes from

Social Security is financed almost entirely by three things: payroll taxes, income tax on Social Security benefits, and interest on the trust fund reserves. Payroll tax is by far the largest. Employees and employers each pay 6.2% of covered earnings, and self-employed workers pay 12.4%, on earnings up to an annual maximum, which was $184,500 in 2026. The maximum usually rises each year with the national average wage; the current figure is on our Social Security tax limit page.

Payroll taxes were about 91% of OASI income in 2025. The Trustees estimate 184.7 million people paid Social Security payroll taxes that year, while 62.3 million people received OASI benefits and 8.2 million received DI benefits. Taken together, Social Security's cost exceeded its income by $160.2 billion in 2025. Benefit payments were 99% of OASI's cost; administrative expenses were 0.3%.

The income tax on benefits is the piece that affects retirees directly. Beneficiaries with incomes above $25,000 (single) or $32,000 (married filing jointly) include up to 50% of their benefits in taxable income, and above $34,000 or $44,000, up to 85%. The tax on the first 50% of included benefits goes to the Social Security trust funds, and the tax on the part above 50% goes to Medicare's hospital fund. The Trustees note that these thresholds are not indexed for inflation. To see where your own income falls, use the Social Security taxable benefits calculator or read how Social Security is taxed.

Why costs are outrunning income

The Trustees attribute much of the long-term rise in costs to the decline in fertility rates and the aging of the population that follows from it, which under their assumptions stabilizes after 2080. Measured against taxable payroll, Social Security's annual cost rises from 15.37% in 2026 to 20.45% by 2085, while its income rate rises only from 12.91% to 13.45% by the end of the projection.

Two key dates in the report show how long this has been coming. Social Security's cost first exceeded its income excluding interest in 2010, and it first exceeded total income including interest in 2021. For 2026 the Trustees project total cost of $1,697 billion against total income of $1,493 billion for the two funds combined, and they project that cost will exceed income in every future year.

Measured against the whole economy, Social Security's cost grows from 5.3% of GDP in 2026 to a peak of about 6.9% in 2084, then edges down to 6.7% in 2100.

Why the outlook got worse in 2026

The long-range finances of the combined Social Security funds worsened this year, and the Trustees name three main reasons:

• Fewer births. The assumed ultimate total fertility rate was lowered from 1.90 to 1.75 children per woman.
• Less immigration. Estimated past and assumed future net immigration are lower. Together with fertility, that means fewer projected workers, a smaller taxable payroll and lower GDP.
• The One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The law enacted on July 4, 2025, made the lower income tax rates and larger standard deduction from the 2017 tax law permanent and added a temporary additional deduction for people over 65. Lower income taxes on benefits mean less revenue flowing into the trust funds from that source.

The report measures the long-range gap with the actuarial balance, the difference between projected income and cost over 75 years as a share of taxable payroll. For the combined funds it went from a deficit of 3.82% in the 2025 report to 4.42% in 2026. Changes in demographic data and assumptions accounted for most of the change, and legislation for another 0.16 points. Updated economic data and assumptions, including better near-term productivity and earnings growth, improved the balance by 0.10 points. Moving the 75-year window forward one year, which adds a high-deficit year at the end, also worsened it slightly.

The Disability Insurance fund is the exception. It shows a small positive balance of 0.13% of taxable payroll and is projected to pay full benefits through at least 2100.

The short-range picture

The Trustees also look at the next ten years, 2026 through 2035, using the trust fund ratio: reserves at the start of a year as a percentage of that year's projected cost. A ratio of 100% or more is the test for short-range adequacy.

• OASI started 2026 at 153% and is projected to fall below 100% by the beginning of 2029. It has not been adequately financed for the short range since 2019.
• DI started 2026 at 132% and is projected to keep rising.
• HI started 2026 at 53% and is not projected to reach 100% within five years. It has not met the test since 2003.

What the reports say about Medicare

Medicare has two trust funds, and they are financed in very different ways. The Hospital Insurance (HI) fund, which pays for Part A, is funded mainly by payroll taxes: 1.45% each from employees and employers, or 2.9% for the self-employed, with no cap on earnings, plus an extra 0.9% paid by employees on earnings over $200,000 for individual filers and over $250,000 for joint filers.

HI can pay full benefits until the second quarter of 2033. After that, income would cover 89% of scheduled benefits, falling to 85% by 2050 and then gradually rising to 93% by 2100. The Trustees expect HI to run annual deficits from 2027 on. The fund's outlook worsened this year because of higher assumed use of some provider services, higher Medicare Advantage spending per person, and less revenue from the tax on benefits after the 2025 tax law.

The Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) fund, which pays for Part B and Part D, cannot run out the same way. Its main sources, beneficiary premiums and federal contributions from the Treasury, are reset each year to cover the next year's expected costs, with premiums normally set to cover about one quarter of the costs. The trade-off, in the Trustees' words, is that rapidly rising SMI spending places steadily increasing demands on beneficiaries and general taxpayers. That is why the Part B premium rises with costs; it was $202.90 a month in 2026, with higher-income enrollees paying more through IRMAA.

The reports also project that Medicare's cost, about 79% of Social Security's in 2026, will exceed Social Security's by 2036. Combined, the two programs cost 9.4% of GDP in 2026, rising to 12.5% in 2050, with most of the increase coming from Medicare.

One more Medicare item appears every year. The law requires the Trustees to issue a determination of "excess general revenue funding" if general revenues are expected to pay more than 45% of Medicare's costs within seven fiscal years. The 2026 report makes that determination for fiscal year 2026, the tenth consecutive report to do so, and two consecutive determinations trigger a "Medicare funding warning" that requires the President to propose legislation. This is the ninth consecutive year of that warning.

What the Trustees say should happen

The report does not recommend any particular fix, and it does not predict what Congress will do. It does say lawmakers have many options to reduce or eliminate the long-term shortfalls, and that acting sooner allows a broader range of solutions and more time to phase changes in so the public can prepare.

It also gives a sense of the size of the gap. An actuarial balance of zero for OASI and HI could be reached with a uniform increase in the payroll tax rate, or a uniform percentage reduction in benefits, for all years starting in 2026; the combined Social Security deficit is 4.42% of taxable payroll. Even that change, the Trustees note, would leave the funds declining toward depletion at the end of the 75 years, and larger changes would be needed to keep reserves stable after that.

The reports are signed by the four Trustees who serve by virtue of their offices: the Secretary of the Treasury, who is the Managing Trustee, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Labor and the Commissioner of Social Security. The law provides for two more Trustees appointed by the President as public representatives; those positions have been vacant since July 2015.

What this means if you are retired or close to it

The report is a projection under current law, not a forecast of what lawmakers will do, and the Trustees revise it every year as data and assumptions change. With that in mind, a few points follow directly from what it says:

• Benefits do not stop at depletion. Under current law, continuing income would still pay most scheduled benefits: 78% for OASI, 83% on the combined basis.
• The dates are close enough to matter for planning. Late 2032 and 2034 fall within the retirement of anyone retiring today.
• Medicare premiums keep rising with costs. Parts B and D are funded year by year, so rising spending shows up in what enrollees pay.
• Taxes on benefits are tied to the trust funds. The $25,000 and $32,000 thresholds are not indexed, so more retirees cross them over time.
• Each year's report can move the dates. This year OASI moved one quarter earlier and the combined date did not move at all.

Whatever Congress decides, your own benefit still starts with your record. Our guide to how your benefit is calculated and the guide to when to start Social Security cover the choices that are yours to make, and the break-even calculator compares claiming ages.

Where to read the full reports

The summary this guide draws on is published by the Social Security Administration's Office of the Chief Actuary at ssa.gov/oact/trsum. The full Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports include ranges of uncertainty this guide does not cover: projections under low-cost and high-cost assumptions, sensitivity tests that change one assumption at a time, and, for Social Security, stochastic simulations that produce a range of outcomes. The next reports will update every date and percentage here, and we will update this guide when they come out.