Federal employees who retire under the Federal Employees Retirement System and are younger than 62 on December 1 receive no annual cost-of-living adjustment on their annuity, according to the Office of Personnel Management. The agency’s CSRS and FERS handbook states the bar in absolute terms and then lists four groups that are excepted from it. Anyone outside those four groups sees the annuity stay flat until the year they reach 62.
The age-62 rule in OPM’s own words
Chapter 2 of the handbook, titled Cost-of-Living Adjustments, opens the FERS discussion with a single sentence: “OPM FERS COLAs do not apply to annuitants who are under age 62 as of December 1, except” followed by a list. The December 1 date is the age test date.
OPM’s retirement FAQ describes the timing the same way: “If a COLA is payable, we make the change in December of each year. You’ll receive the adjusted payment in January, the following month.” For the adjustment tied to 2027, that means the annuity payment arriving in January 2027 is the first one that could carry any increase, and only for annuitants who meet the age test or fall into an excepted group.
The same FAQ shows how the two federal systems already differ once the adjustment is paid. For 2026, OPM reports a 2.0 percent increase for FERS retirees compared with 2.8 percent for CSRS retirees. The gap comes from the FERS formula, which the handbook describes as matching the rise in the consumer price index for urban wage earners (CPI-W) when that rise is 2 percent or less, holding at 2 percent when the rise falls between 2 and 3 percent, and running 1 percentage point below CPI-W when the rise is above 3 percent.
The four groups OPM lists as exceptions
The handbook enumerates the exceptions to the age-62 bar in a numbered list. The four groups, as OPM words them in the same chapter, are these.
First, disability annuitants. The handbook covers disability annuitants, “including military reserve technicians who are medically disqualified for military service or the rank required to hold their positions.” This group comes with a limit written into the same item: disability annuitants who are receiving 60 percent of their high-3 average salary do not receive COLAs. For that subset the annuity is excluded from adjustments entirely, which is an exclusion rather than a smaller raise.
Second, certain military reserve technicians. These are technicians whose separation from technician service resulted from loss of military membership or rank on account of disability after attaining age 50 and completing 25 years of service.
Third, public safety and aviation retirees. The handbook names employees who retired under the special provisions for law enforcement officers, firefighters, or air traffic controllers.
Fourth, survivors. The handbook lists spouse, former spouse, and insurable interest survivor annuitants.
Why the title says “at all”
The wording of the handbook is categorical: the adjustments “do not apply” to a FERS annuitant under 62 as of December 1 unless the person is in one of the four groups above. Nothing in the chapter offers a partial or prorated raise to a younger annuitant outside those groups. OPM’s FAQ makes the same point in plainer language, saying FERS annuitants under 62 are not eligible for COLA increases unless certain conditions are met.
Under the handbook’s rule, a retiree outside the four groups who is under 62 on December 1 receives no adjustment that year. A retiree who is a law enforcement officer, firefighter or air traffic controller covered by the special provisions follows a different path, as do disability and survivor annuitants under the exceptions above. A retiree who left under the regular rules and is outside every listed group does not.
What the rule changes for planning before 62
Because the annuity does not move for those years, a retiree who stops work before 62 meets rising prices with a fixed payment until the first December after the 62nd birthday. The 2026 FERS figure of 2.0 percent in OPM’s FAQ shows the scale of the adjustment: the FERS adjustment in a given year is not paid to annuitants under 62 outside the four groups.
That fixed-annuity stretch also makes the other income sources more important. Many FERS retirees bridge the years before 62 with savings drawn from the Thrift Savings Plan or IRAs, which pulls withdrawal timing and tax brackets into the same decision as the annuity. OPM does not publish guidance on that coordination in the COLA chapter, which stays narrowly on who receives the adjustment and how it is computed.
What the OPM pages leave unstated
Neither OPM page puts a dollar amount on what a retiree gives up, and neither says how a retiree should cover the gap. The handbook chapter and the FAQ are descriptive: they set out the age test, the four exceptions, the December timing and the formula. The FAQ also notes that recent retirees receive prorated amounts when an adjustment does apply, a separate rule that matters once a retiree reaches 62.
The figure for the next adjustment is not set in OPM’s materials. The handbook ties the FERS rate to the CPI-W increase, so the final percentage depends on that index and on the thresholds above, not on any action by OPM itself. The age-62 test and the four exceptions are the fixed parts, and both are stated on the face of OPM’s own handbook chapter.
A flat annuity until 62 and the savings that fill the gap
The Retirement Tax & Withdrawal Planner is written for retirees who leave work before 62 and rely on several income streams at once, such as an annuity, savings and later Social Security. It addresses the problem of deciding which account to draw from first when one of those streams does not rise with prices.
The Retirement Tax & Withdrawal Planner includes the account withdrawal order and a Roth bracket fill calculator, so a retiree can sequence withdrawals around a fixed annuity.
Sort the withdrawal order around a flat FERS annuity before age 62 →
This article was produced with AI assistance and checked against the Office of Personnel Management pages linked above.
David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
