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Retroactive Social Security Payments are Being Sent

1.1 million people with public pensions began receiving retroactive Social Security payments this month. The SSA announced that people with public pensions, ie., people like firefighters, police officers and teachers, began receiving payments due under the Social Security Fairness Act.

Payments are expected to go through next month which just so happens to be the same month when payments are expected to increase due to a law which passed in January. Over 2.5 million people are expected to receive a $360 increase, on average.

The law eliminated two federal policies that prevented employees with a public pension from receiving their full benefits under the federal retirement program, which is why the retroactive payments were made. Benefits for the surviving spouses and family members of such workers were also diminished by those same policies.

Under the new law, the increase in benefits are retroactive to December 2023. This means that public workers who were only eligible for partial benefits will now receive full benefits.

The SSA announced on Tuesday that the average retroactive payment through March 4 is $6,710. Through March 4, a total of $7.5 billion in retroactive payments were made to approximately 1.13 million people, it continued.

The payment amounts will vary from person to person, of course. “Some people’s benefits will increase very little, while others may be eligible for over $1,000 more each month,” the Social Security Administration has previously stated .