Can I Work and Collect Social Security? Earnings Limit Calculator

The Social Security earnings limits by year

Two limits apply, and which one is yours depends on the calendar year you reach full retirement age. SSA raises both every year in line with average wages and announces them in October with the cost-of-living raise.

Over the lower limit, SSA keeps $1 for every $2. Over the higher one, $1 for every $3, and only earnings from the months before your full retirement age count toward it. Your full retirement age is 67 if you were born in 1960 or later, and between 66 and 67 for births from 1955 to 1959.

How SSA collects what it holds back

SSA does not trim every check a little. It stops whole checks at the start of the year until it has collected what your earnings require, then pays every check after that in full. If the last stopped check was more than it needed, it sends the difference the following year.

Say your check is $1,200 a month and you will earn $34,480 in 2026 while under full retirement age all year. That is $10,000 over the limit, so SSA needs to hold back $5,000. It stops your January through May checks, which comes to $6,000, pays you in full from June, and returns the extra $1,000 early the next year. In all you collect $9,400 of your $14,400 for the year.

Earning a little over the limit costs a little. Earning a lot over it can stop every check for the year, because the holdback grows by $1 for each $2 of extra pay.

The year you reach full retirement age

In that calendar year the bar is much higher, $65,160 in 2026, and SSA looks only at what you earn before the month of your birthday that marks full retirement age. Pay from that month on, and every month after, never counts. Many people who keep a full-time job find the test costs them nothing in this final year.

Retiring partway through the year: the monthly rule

Someone who works until October has usually earned past the yearly limit already. So for one year, normally the year you start benefits, SSA also checks month by month. Any whole month in which you earn $2,040 or less (or $5,430 or less in the year you reach full retirement age) gets a full check, whatever you made earlier in the year. After that year only the yearly total matters.

If you are self-employed, SSA also looks at your hours. Working more than 45 hours a month in your business generally means you are not retired that month. Under 15 hours means you are. In between depends on how skilled the work is and how big the business is.

What counts as earnings, and what doesn't

• Counts: wages, bonuses, commissions and vacation pay from a job, and net profit from self-employment.
• Doesn't count: pensions, annuities, investment income, interest, capital gains, veterans benefits, and other government or military retirement pay.
• Timing: wages count in the year you earned them, even if you are paid later. Self-employment income counts when you receive it.

How the withheld money comes back

The checks SSA stops are not returned as a lump sum. At full retirement age, SSA recalculates your monthly check as if you had started benefits later, by one month for every month it held back a check in full or in part. The early-claiming reduction shrinks, and the larger check lasts for the rest of your life, with the yearly raises on top.

Take someone born in 1964 whose check at full retirement age would be $2,000. Starting at 62, the check is $1,400. If work stops 24 of those checks before 67, SSA treats the claim as starting two years later, and the check at 67 becomes $1,600. The $200 a month raise takes about 14 years to repay the $33,600 held back, until about age 81.

If work will stop almost every check before full retirement age anyway, claiming early mostly changes nothing. Once SSA has held back every month, the check at full retirement age is the same as if you had waited.

Survivors, spouses and family

• Widows and widowers under full retirement age face the same test. SSA uses your full retirement age for your own retirement benefit when it applies the limit, even though survivor full retirement age can be earlier.
• Benefits paid to family on your record, such as a spouse or children, can be cut by your earnings too.
• A spouse's own job only affects that spouse's own benefits, not yours.

Tell SSA when your earnings change

SSA sets this year's withholding from the estimate you give it. If you pick up more hours, change jobs or stop working, tell SSA right away, by phone or through your online account, so it can stop or restart checks before an overpayment builds up. Paying back an overpayment is far more painful than adjusting early.

What this calculator leaves out

• Raises from your new earnings. If a year of work turns out to be one of your highest-earning years, SSA raises your benefit for it the following December. That can add to the check on top of what is shown here.
• Future limits. Years after 2026 use the 2026 limits. Limits rise with wages, so in today's dollars they stay roughly level.
• Disability benefits and SSI. Different rules apply. SSDI uses a monthly "substantial gainful activity" test instead.
• Work outside the United States and self-employment hours. Both have their own tests.
• Exact birthdays. SSA treats someone born on the 1st of a month as born in the month before. The calculator works in whole months.

Deciding when to start benefits at all? The Social Security break-even calculator compares claiming at 62, at full retirement age and at 70, including what a surviving spouse would get.

Before you file

This page does the arithmetic SSA describes. It is not financial advice, and I'm not a financial adviser. SSA's own Receiving Benefits While Working page has its official calculator. Check your figures in your my Social Security account, or call SSA at 1-800-772-1213.