Social Security Report Projects Trust Fund Shortfall in 2034

Benefits would be reduced by 17 percent without congressional action, trustees say, echoing last year’s forecast

Deirdre Shesgreen,

AARP

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Published June 09, 2026

Rob Dobi

Key takeaways

In their latest annual report, Social Security’s trustees project that the system’s surplus will run dry in 2034, the same as last year’s estimate.
Unless Congress acts to shore up Social Security’s finances, annual revenues will cover only about 83 percent of scheduled benefits at that time.
Reductions in immigration and, especially, fertility rates are driving a worsening long-term forecast for the program.

The surplus in Social Security’s trust funds will be depleted in 2034 unless Congress passes legislation to shore up the system’s finances, according to the latest projections from the Board of Trustees that oversees the funds.

The trustees’ 2026 annual report, issued on June 9, offers the same bottom line as last year’s projection for the estimated date when the combined funds that pay out Social Security retirement, survivor and disability benefits will run dry.

Social Security payments, which currently go to more than 71 million people, are primarily funded by payroll taxes levied on most U.S. workers. Without congressional action to address the shortfall, annual revenue flowing into the program will cover only about 83 percent of benefits once the trust funds are depleted.

“This should be a wake-up call: Congress needs to act,” Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan, AARP’s CEO, said in a statement. "Americans have worked hard and paid into Social Security their entire lives, and they deserve to count on it when they retire. No family should see any cuts to what they’ve earned in Social Security.”  

Running the numbers

The trustees’ report says three factors are negatively impacting the program’s revenue picture compared to last year: declining fertility rates and lower immigration, which reduce the number of present and future workers paying into Social Security via payroll taxes, and last year’s major tax and spending legislation, dubbed the "One Big Beautiful Bill."

That measure included a new temporary deduction of up to $6,000 for people 65 and older who meet certain income requirements. That provision, which AARP supported, will reduce the tax burden for many older Americans (at least through 2028, when it is scheduled to expire), but it and other elements of the bill reduce revenue from income tax levied on Social Security payments for some recipients, which flows into the trust funds.

A stronger economy over the next 10 years will help offset some of that short-term revenue hit, according to the trustees, who project that wages and labor productivity (measured as gross domestic product per hour worked) will grow at faster rates than forecast in past reports, boosting Social Security’s tax revenue.

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In the long term, however, new projections on immigration and, especially, birth rates suggest a widening gap between the revenue Social Security collects and the benefits it pays out.

For example, in last year’s report, the trustees projected the U.S. fertility rate at 1.9 children per woman; this year’s report lowers that to 1.75. That significantly increases their projection of how Social Security’s shortfall will grow over the next 75 years without legislative action to address the gap.

Congress can't wait

The trustees’ report analyzes Social Security’s fiscal health over the next 75 years, based on economic and demographic trends that determine how much the program will collect in taxes and other revenue and how much it will pay out in retirement, survivor, family and disability benefits.

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Nancy LeaMond, AARP’s executive vice president and chief advocacy & engagement officer, says the trust fund report sounds an annual warning for policymakers in Washington. Congress needs to act “sooner rather than later,” she says.

Congress last made major adjustments to Social Security’s financial structure in 1983, accelerating an increase in the payroll tax and gradually raising the full retirement age (FRA) from 65 to 67, among other steps. Those changes were designed to allow the program to build up a large surplus, as incoming revenue outpaced payments to beneficiaries.

In recent years, as birth rates have declined and the retiree population has grown, the equation has flipped. Since 2021, Social Security has been paying out more each year to recipients than it collects in revenue, reducing the surplus built up over three-plus decades.

Medicare trustees’ annual report, also released June 9, projects a relatively slight decline in that program’s financial health. According to the report, the trust fund that pays for Part A, the hospitalization component of Medicare, will be unable to fully meet its costs after the second quarter of 2033, three months earlier than last year’s forecast.

“The 125 million Americans age 50 and older have made clear [that] cutting Social Security or Medicare is not an option,” Minter-Jordan said. “This is money Americans have earned over a lifetime of hard work. They planned for retirement, followed the rules, and now Congress must keep its promise by strengthening, not cutting, Social Security.”

Trust fund timeline no surprise

The 2034 depletion date is based on an analysis of current and projected future revenue and expenditures for Social Security’s two trust funds — the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) fund, which covers retiree and survivor payments, and the Disability Insurance (DI) fund, which pays for disability benefits.

In 2025, they took in a combined $1.45 trillion and paid out $1.61 trillion, reducing their reserves from about $2.72 trillion to $2.56 trillion. (A small portion of the outlay, less than half of 1 percent, covers Social Security’s administrative costs; the rest pays benefits.)

While the trustees issue combined projections for the OASI and DI funds, the two funds are maintained separately. Considered alone, the surplus in the retiree and survivors trust fund will exhaust its reserves in the fourth quarter of 2032, and Social Security will be able to pay out 78 percent of those benefits that year. The disability fund’s reserves are sufficient to fully cover benefits for at least 75 years, the period covered by the report.

These timelines should come as no surprise to lawmakers, who have long known the rough deadline for addressing Social Security’s finances, says Gopi Shah Goda, director of the Retirement Security Project at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

Since the early 2010s, the trustees have projected a depletion date between 2033 and 2036. But years of congressional inaction have narrowed the window for solutions, Shah Goda says: “Twenty years ago, we could have made much more gradual changes, while now we are in more immediate need of revenues or benefit reductions.”

LeaMond says that “AARP opposes any changes that cut Americans’ Social Security payments, whether by reducing the COLA [cost-of-living adjustment], privatization or raising the retirement age.”

“At a time when the future of Social Security is being tested by proposals that would weaken the program, the trustees’ report highlights the need for Congress to protect what people have earned,” Minter-Jordan said in her statement. “We will not let special interests push proposals to cut Social Security for middle-class families.”

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Deirdre Shesgreen is an AARP writer and editor covering Social Security. She previously worked as a state news editor for the AARP Bulletin and as a reporter and editor at USA Today, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other publications.