How to qualify for retirement benefits Who doesn’t qualify for Social Security? What if I worked abroad? Can retirement benefits be suspended?

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Who Qualifies for Social Security Retirement Benefits?

You earn your benefits by paying into Social Security via payroll taxes — here’s how it works

5-minute read

Part of Series: Retirement Benefits

Phil Pruitt,

AARP

Expert reviewed by

Tom Margenau

Published October 12, 2026

Phil Pruitt is an AARP writer and editor focusing on Social Security. He is a former editor at Scripps News and Yahoo News and was on the start-up staff at USA Today, where he held numerous editing positions.

Tom Margenau writes the "Social Security Simplified" column for AARP Bulletin and the nationally syndicated column "Social Security and You." He is a former public information director at the Social Security Administration and a 32-year veteran of the agency.

Key takeaways

You qualify for Social Security retirement benefits by working in “covered” employment, meaning you paid Social Security taxes on your earnings.
Those earnings translate into accounting units called credits, of which you can earn up to four a year.
At 40 credits, you are considered by Social Security to be “fully insured” — you qualify for retirement benefits once you reach claiming age.

The baseline qualification for Social Security retirement benefits is working in “covered” employment — jobs or self-employment in which you pay Social Security taxes. An estimated 93 percent of U.S. workers are in that category in 2026, according to an April 2026 report from the Congressional Research Service.

How to qualify for retirement benefits
Who doesn’t qualify for Social Security?
What if I worked abroad?
Can retirement benefits be suspended?

Those taxes earn you what the Social Security Administration (SSA) calls “credits” — up to four of them a year, depending on your income. Here’s how those credits lead, down the road, to the retirement benefit you’ve earned.

How to qualify for retirement benefits

Most covered workers — those with wage-paying jobs — pay into the system via Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) withholding from their paychecks, at a rate of 6.2 percent of gross income. Your employer also contributes 6.2 percent to meet the federal Social Security tax rate of 12.4 percent. If you work for yourself, you pay the whole 12.4 percent (calculated from your net income, not gross) as part of your IRS tax return.

The SSA translates that covered income into accounting units called Social Security credits. In 2026, you get one credit for every $1,890 you earn. By earning $7,560, you receive four credits, the most you can collect in one year. The credit amounts are adjusted annually in accordance with national wage trends.

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When you reach 40 credits, you are, in Social Security-speak, “fully insured,” but you can’t claim retirement benefits until you reach the minimum eligibility age of 62. As a practical matter, most people qualify for Social Security after 10 years in the labor force. However, you need not accrue those 40 credits consecutively. If you stop working, the credits you have stay on your record, and you resume accruing them when you return to work.

The only way to earn credits is by working and paying Social Security taxes. You can’t borrow credits, buy them from Social Security or transfer them from someone else’s employment record. And accruing more than 40, as most people do, doesn’t affect your eventual retirement benefit; that is based on your lifetime earnings record, not the number of credits you earned.

Who doesn’t qualify for Social Security?

A small share of U.S. workers do not (or did not) pay Social Security taxes on their earnings and thus are not eligible to collect retirement benefits. Most are state and local government employees whose agencies do not participate in the Social Security system.

Of the nearly 22.9 million state, county and local government employees in 2023, 6.3 million, or 27 percent, were non-covered, according to the most recent data available from the Congressional Research Service, which tracks Social Security coverage. Most of these non-covered workers are local police officers, firefighters and teachers.

Other non-covered workers include:

Current or former employees of the U.S. government who were hired before 1984, the year federal agencies came under the Social Security umbrella. These workers get pensions under the old Civil Service Retirement System.
Railroad employees, who are covered by a separate pension system that came into being in the 1930s, around the same time as Social Security.
Foreign nationals who work in the United States for their home governments or for some international organizations, such as the United Nations. (U.S. citizens who work in the United States for foreign governments — say, an American employed by the French embassy in Washington — do pay Social Security taxes and are covered.)

Contrary to a persistent urban legend, members of Congress are covered by Social Security. Like other U.S. government employees, they’ve paid into the system since 1984.

What if I worked abroad?

The United States has what are called “totalization agreements” with many countries that help you qualify for Social Security by letting you pool your credits from work in the U.S. and abroad. The agreements may also eliminate the need for you to pay payroll taxes to both countries on the same wages — you pay into just one system.

As of September 2026, the U.S. had such pacts with 31 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Uruguay. Romania’s is the newest, taking effect on Sept. 1, 2026.

You’ll find details on how Social Security works with foreign retirement systems on the SSA’s web page on international agreements.

Can retirement benefits be suspended?

In limited circumstances, the SSA will stop payments to an otherwise qualified beneficiary. For example, you cannot receive Social Security payments during a period of incarceration if you are serving at least 30 consecutive days for a criminal conviction. That doesn’t mean people with criminal records are disqualified from Social Security; benefits are reinstated in the month following release from prison.

Payments can also be suspended for fugitive felons and beneficiaries who are in violation of parole or probation.

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