The Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish the September Consumer Price Index at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday, October 14, 2026. That report supplies the last monthly reading that goes into the cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security benefits, so the release date is the date the final input becomes public. As of this writing, the Social Security Administration has posted no 2027 adjustment figure.
What the BLS schedule shows for October 14
The agency’s CPI release calendar lists the September 2026 reference month for October 14, 2026, at 08:30 AM. The same table gives August’s report as September 11 and the October report as November 10, which places September’s number between two routine releases rather than at an irregular slot. The page carries no delay, postponement, rescheduling or shutdown notice.
The bureau repeats the date in the August report itself. The release text on the BLS consumer price index summary says the next release is scheduled for “Wednesday, October 14, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. (ET).” Two separate BLS pages therefore agree on the day and the hour.
Why September is the last number in the formula
Social Security does not use the headline inflation rate that gets quoted on the evening news. According to the Social Security Administration’s COLA page, “COLAs are based on increases in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W).” The agency spells out the arithmetic: a COLA effective for December of the current year equals the percentage increase, if any, in the CPI-W from the average for the third quarter of the current year to the average for the third quarter of the last year in which a COLA became effective.
The third quarter is July, August and September. Each of the three monthly CPI-W readings counts toward a single quarterly average, and that average is compared with the one from the last year a COLA took effect. July’s figure arrived in August and August’s arrived on September 11. September is the month still outstanding, which is why the October 14 report closes the data set.
The August report put the CPI-W, not seasonally adjusted, at 328.481 on the 1982-84 base, according to the BLS summary. That level is one of the three monthly values that feed the quarterly average. It is not a cost-of-living adjustment, and no single month’s level decides the outcome, because the third-quarter average is only complete once September’s index is in hand.
The date of the CPI report versus the date of the COLA
Two different events are easy to merge. The BLS release is the data event on October 14. The cost-of-living adjustment is Social Security’s own determination, built from that data, and it is announced by the Social Security Administration rather than the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS calendar says nothing about when the Social Security announcement will occur, and this article does not assign one.
The distinction matters for anyone trying to plan around a number. A forecast published today is an estimate by its author. The SSA’s page carries no 2027 adjustment, so any percentage circulating before October 14 is a projection rather than an agency figure. The only fixed fact available now is the one the bureau has put in writing: when the last piece of the formula will be published.
What the adjustment looked like the last time
The SSA page’s most recent entry describes the prior cycle. It states that “Social Security benefits will increase by 2.8 percent beginning with the December 2025 benefits, which are payable in January 2026.” That sentence shows how the sequence works in practice. A third-quarter calculation fixes a percentage. The percentage attaches to the December benefit month. The first check carrying it reaches beneficiaries the following month.
The page lists that 2.8 percent as the latest adjustment, and it names no figure for 2027. Whatever percentage the formula produces after the September data, it will not be visible on the agency’s page until the agency publishes it.
Where the CPI-W differs from the index in the headlines
The CPI-W is built for urban wage earners and clerical workers, a narrower population than the all-urban index that dominates inflation coverage. The BLS summary reports CPI-W figures alongside the broader measures in the same release, so the October 14 document will contain both. Social Security uses the first. Anyone who watches only the all-items headline number on release morning may be looking at a different series from the one the program uses, even though both come out at 8:30 a.m. in the same report.
The primary sources that will settle the number
Two agency pages will matter on and after October 14. The BLS schedule page will keep showing the September release as the controlling date, and its notices section is where any change would appear. The Social Security Administration’s COLA page is where the agency’s own adjustment will be posted once it exists. The schedule page, as read for this article, shows September 2026 at 08:30 AM on October 14 with no notice attached, and the SSA page, as read for this article, carries 2.8 percent as the latest adjustment and nothing for 2027.
Waiting on a CPI report while the monthly deposit stays on its own schedule
An inflation release sets a percentage, but it does not change when a Social Security payment lands or what happens when one does not. Beneficiaries who budget around a single deposit are exposed on the days a payment is late or missing, and the CPI report does nothing to help with that gap.
The Social Security Check Protection Kit includes the 2026 payment calendar and a first-24-hours plan for a late or missing payment, each tied to a task a beneficiary can complete.
Look up the 2026 payment calendar and the late-payment plan alongside the October 14 CPI release →
This article was produced with AI assistance and checked against the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Social Security Administration 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.
