Will my Social Security payment increase if I keep working after I start receiving benefits?

It might. It all depends on how much you’re making now and how much you’ve made over your working life.

Social Security uses your lifetime average for monthly income, as calculated from your 35 highest-earning years and adjusted to reflect historical wage trends, as the basis for your benefit calculation. Even if you’ve already claimed your benefits, Social Security annually recalculates this average, factoring in any new income from work. If your current earnings fall into your top 35 earning years, your monthly average will rise, and so could your benefit.

Continuing to work may have a benefit downside if you claimed Social Security early. In the years before you reach full retirement age, you are subject to Social Security’s earnings test, which reduces your benefits if your income from work exceeds a set limit ($24,480 in 2026).

In the year in which you will reach full retirement age, the earnings cap goes up ($65,160 in 2026), and when you pass the milestone birthday, it disappears. 

Full retirement age is 66 and 10 months for people born in 1959, so those born from March through December of that year will reach it in 2026. (Most of them, anyway: For benefit purposes, Social Security considers you to have attained an age on the day before your birthday, so people born on March 1, 1959, reach FRA on Dec. 31, 2025.) For those born in 1960 or later, FRA is 67.