Social Security Index Factor Table: Age 60 Rule and Wage Cap

The Social Security index factor table is the Social Security Administration’s published list of multipliers that convert your past earnings into today’s wage levels before your benefit is calculated. You pick the year you turn 62, and the table gives you a factor for every earlier year of your career. Multiply each year’s covered earnings by its factor, and the results are your “indexed earnings,” which feed directly into the formula that sets your monthly check. For someone turning 62 in 2026, the factors are built from the 2024 national Average Wage Index of $69,846.57.¹

Where to Find the Table

The SSA hosts the table at ssa.gov/oact/cola/awifactors.html. You enter a year of birth (technically, the year you turn 62), and the tool returns a complete set of factors covering every earnings year in your record. Worked examples for hypothetical retirees are posted separately at ssa.gov/oact/progdata/retirebenefit1.html.²

How Each Factor Is Built

Every number in the table is a ratio. The numerator is the Average Wage Index (AWI) for the year you turned 60. The denominator is the AWI for the year you actually earned the wages. Older years produce bigger factors because the wage gap is wider.

A worker born in 1964 turned 60 in 2024, so the 2024 AWI of $69,846.57 sits on top. Divide by the 1986 AWI of $17,321.82 and you get 4.0323. Every dollar of 1986 earnings is treated as roughly $4.03 in the benefit formula.² More recent years have factors closer to 1.0, and the year you turn 60 has a factor of exactly 1.0.

The reason wages are scaled by the AWI rather than by inflation is that the AWI tracks actual wage growth across the workforce, not price changes. Wages have historically grown faster than prices, so indexing to wages produces a higher benefit than a straight inflation adjustment would.

The Age 60 Cutoff

Indexing stops at the year you turn 60. Earnings from that year forward go into the benefit formula at their actual dollar amount with no adjustment.²

Age 60 is the cutoff, rather than age 62 when you first become eligible, because of data timing. The AWI for any given year isn’t published until the following fall, so when the SSA needs to finalize your factors at 62, the freshest number available is from two years earlier.¹

Once the factors are set, they never change. If you keep working past 62 and the AWI keeps rising, your factors stay fixed at the values locked in when you first became eligible. The additional years of work still count in the benefit calculation, just at their nominal amounts.

Using the Table on Your Own Earnings

The mechanics are the same for everyone. For each year before you turned 60, look up the factor and multiply it by your covered earnings for that year. For the year you turned 60 and every year after, use the earnings unchanged. Using SSA figures for a worker born in 1964 and first eligible in 2026:²

1986 earnings of $16,196 multiplied by factor 4.0323 give $65,307 in indexed earnings.
2019 earnings of $55,848 multiplied by factor 1.2911 give $72,103.
2024 earnings of $73,133 pass through at factor 1.0000, so $73,133.
2025 earnings of $75,868 also pass through unchanged, since they follow age 60.

The $16,196 line becomes $65,307 after indexing, while the recent years don’t move. The indexed figure is what the benefit formula uses. Whatever appears as raw earnings on your Social Security statement is not what the formula sees for pre-age-60 years.

One Ceiling to Know About Before You Multiply

Only earnings up to that year’s taxable maximum ever land on your Social Security record in the first place. For 2026 the cap is $184,500. The cap was $3,600 in the 1950s, $25,900 in 1980, and $76,200 in 2000.³ Indexing can lift the recorded amount, but it cannot recover income that was over the cap and therefore never recorded. High earners in earlier decades will see indexed earnings that fall short of what their gross pay might suggest.

What Indexed Earnings Feed Into

After you index every year, the SSA pulls your 35 highest indexed years, adds them, and divides by 420 months. That’s your Average Indexed Monthly Earnings, or AIME.⁴

The AIME then runs through a bracketed formula. For workers first eligible in 2026:⁵

90% of the first $1,286 of AIME
32% of AIME between $1,286 and $7,749
15% of AIME above $7,749

Add those three pieces together and you have the Primary Insurance Amount, which is the monthly benefit at full retirement age. Because the first bracket is credited at 90% and the last at only 15%, a shift in AIME can matter well out of proportion to its size, depending on which bracket the change lands in. That is why the indexing step, quiet as it looks, ends up carrying a lot of weight.

When the Indexing Year Isn’t Age 60

The age 60 rule applies to retirement claims. Disability and survivor claims use different indexing years.

For a disability claim, the indexing year is the second year before the onset of disability, not the year the worker turned 60. The number of years averaged is also shorter, using a formula based on elapsed years divided by five rather than the standard retirement approach.⁶

For a surviving spouse, the SSA compares two possible indexing years and uses whichever produces the higher benefit: the year the deceased worker turned 60, or the second year before the survivor becomes eligible.⁶ The survivor’s factors are not necessarily the same ones the worker would have used for their own retirement.

1
Social Security Administration. Indexing Factors for Earnings
2
Social Security Administration. Benefit Calculation Examples for Workers Retiring in 2026
3
Social Security Administration. Contribution and Benefit Base
4
Social Security Administration. Social Security Benefit Amounts
5
Social Security Administration. Primary Insurance Amount
6
Social Security Administration. Computing Your Average Indexed Monthly Earnings