What Is the FERS Supplement? Eligibility, Payments, and Earnings Test

The FERS supplement is a temporary monthly payment from the Office of Personnel Management that fills the income gap between the day you retire under the Federal Employees Retirement System and the day you can draw Social Security at 62. It roughly approximates the Social Security benefit you earned during your FERS-covered career, and it ends the month you turn 62 whether or not you actually file for Social Security. Not every FERS retiree gets it.¹

Who Qualifies

Eligibility depends on the age and service combination you retire under. You qualify if you retire at your Minimum Retirement Age (MRA) with 30 years of creditable service, or at age 60 with 20 years. You also qualify if you’re separated involuntarily or under an early retirement authority (a reduction in force, reorganization, or similar), provided you’ve reached your MRA. If you take one of those early retirements before your MRA, the supplement starts once you reach it. You need at least one full calendar year of FERS-covered service in any case.¹

Your MRA is 56 if you were born between 1953 and 1964, and it climbs by two months per birth year to 57 for anyone born in 1970 or later.²

Special Provision Employees

Law enforcement officers, firefighters, air traffic controllers, and military reserve technicians follow separate rules. They can qualify as early as age 50 with 20 years of covered service, or at any age with 25 years.³ Because these jobs carry mandatory retirement ages, the supplement often runs longer for them than for most retirees.

Who Does Not Qualify

Several groups are permanently excluded, and there’s no waiver or appeal:

MRA+10 retirees — anyone retiring at their MRA with 10 to 29 years of service.
FERS disability retirees.
Anyone claiming a deferred annuity after leaving federal service.
Anyone who retires at age 62 or later. The supplement exists to bridge the gap to Social Security, so if there’s no gap, there’s no payment.⁴

How Much You’ll Get

OPM uses a two-step formula. First, it estimates the Social Security benefit you’d receive at 62 if you had worked a full 40-year career. Then it multiplies that estimate by your years of FERS-covered civilian service divided by 40.⁵

So if OPM estimates your full-career Social Security benefit at $1,000 per month and you have 30 years of FERS service, the fraction is 30 ÷ 40, or 0.75. Your supplement before any earnings-test reduction would be about $750.⁵

Only civilian service under FERS counts in the numerator, rounded to the nearest whole year and capped at 40. Military service generally does not count, even when you’ve made a military deposit to credit it toward your basic annuity. The narrow exception is military service covered by USERRA — time on military leave from your civilian position, when the required deposit has been paid.¹

One caution on the estimate itself: the Social Security figure OPM plugs in isn’t the same number you see on your Social Security statement. OPM builds its own earnings history using your FERS basic pay and “deemed wages” for the years after you turned 21 but before your first full year of FERS service. Social Security uses your actual earnings from every employer you’ve ever had. Your supplement may run a bit higher or lower than you’d expect from a rough fraction of your Social Security statement.¹

No Cost-of-Living Adjustments

The supplement doesn’t get annual COLAs. Federal regulations exclude it from the COLA rules that apply to your basic annuity and to survivor annuities.⁶ The nominal payment stays flat from the first month until it ends at 62. Over several years, inflation eats into it, so plan around a fixed number rather than a growing one.

The Earnings Test if You Keep Working

If you earn income from work after retiring and before turning 62, OPM may reduce your supplement. The test mirrors the one Social Security applies to early retirees who keep working.

For 2026, the annual exempt amount is $24,480. If your earned income for the previous calendar year exceeded that figure, OPM reduces your supplement by $1 for every $2 over the limit, spread evenly across your monthly payments for the year.⁷⁸ The exempt amount adjusts each year with national wage growth.

Only wages from an employer and net self-employment income count as earned income. Your FERS annuity, TSP withdrawals, investment dividends, interest, rental income, and capital gains don’t trigger a reduction.⁵ You can draw down savings without touching the supplement.

Each spring, OPM mails Form RI 92-22, the Annuity Supplement Earnings Report, to every retiree who’s between their MRA and 62 and receiving the supplement. You report the prior year’s wages and self-employment income and return the form by June 30. If your earnings were under the exempt amount, you still return the form to say so.⁹

How and When You Apply

There’s no separate application. When you file Standard Form 3107 for immediate retirement, OPM determines whether you qualify and calculates the amount, then includes an estimate of the monthly payment in the materials it sends during claims processing.¹⁰ If you retired involuntarily or under an early-out before hitting your MRA, OPM should start the supplement when you reach it, so keep your contact information current.

Tax Treatment

The supplement is subject to federal income tax. OPM withholds at the rate you chose on your retirement application, defaulting to the withholding rate for a married individual with three exemptions if you didn’t make an election. You can change your withholding anytime through OPM.⁵ The supplement isn’t wages, so no Social Security or Medicare payroll tax comes out of it. State tax treatment varies; some states exempt retirement income and others don’t.

When the Supplement Ends

Payments stop the last day of the month you turn 62, or the last day of the month before you’d first be entitled to Social Security, whichever comes first.³ Because 62 is the earliest Social Security age, those two dates usually land in the same month.

The cutoff runs on age, not on your filing decision. If you plan to delay Social Security to 67 or 70 to grow your monthly check, the supplement still ends at 62, and you’ll have a stretch with neither a supplement nor a Social Security payment.⁵ Your basic annuity and TSP withdrawals need to cover that gap. Plan for it before it arrives.

1
Office of Personnel Management. Chapter 51 – Retiree Annuity Supplement
2
Office of Personnel Management. Eligibility
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 8421 – Annuity Supplement
4
Office of Personnel Management. Types of Retirement
5
Office of Personnel Management. Information for FERS Annuitants
6
eCFR. Subpart G – Cost-of-Living Adjustments
7
Social Security Administration. Exempt Amounts Under the Earnings Test
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 8421a – Reductions on Account of Earnings From Work Performed While Entitled to an Annuity Supplement
9
Office of Personnel Management. Retirement Eligibility Surveys
10
Office of Personnel Management. Planning and Applying