Social Security Retirement Fund Faces Reserve Depletion in 2032

Social Security’s Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund is projected to deplete its reserves in the fourth quarter of 2032, leaving income to cover 78% of scheduled benefits and creating a funding gap.

The projection does not mean payments would end when reserves run out. Payroll taxes and other income would continue, but current law does not allow payments to exceed resources available to the fund. The 78% figure is the projected share of scheduled OASI benefits that income would cover under intermediate assumptions.

OASI pays retirement and survivor benefits. The separate Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund pays disability benefits. A hypothetical calculation combining the two funds puts reserve depletion in the third quarter of 2034, with income covering 83% of scheduled benefits. The funds are legally separate, and combining them would require a change in law.

At the end of 2025, OASI and DI reserves totaled $2.5613 trillion, down $160.2 billion during the year as costs exceeded income. The reserves are invested in special-issue U.S. Treasury securities. Social Security paid benefits to 70 million people in December 2025: 56 million retired workers and dependents, eight million disabled workers and dependents, and six million survivors.

The program’s financing outlook also reflects a changing ratio of workers to beneficiaries. There were 2.6 covered workers per beneficiary in 2025, a figure projected to fall to 1.9 by 2075. The projected actuarial shortfall for 2026 through 2100 is 4.42% of taxable payroll, compared with 3.82% in the prior report.

Options for addressing the gap include changing payroll tax rates, the amount of earnings subject to tax, benefit levels or retirement ages. To illustrate 75-year solvency, a model assuming changes took effect in January 2026 uses either a combined payroll tax rate of 16.65%, up from 12.40%, or a 25.2% reduction in scheduled benefits for current and future beneficiaries. These are modeled scenarios, not enacted policy; the tax-rate estimate does not account for possible behavioral changes.