Sometimes, when government agencies are slow to release information, there’s a reason for it. It’s unclear as to why the most recent Social Security Trustees Report was so late, but that’s not such a common occurrence.
The Social Security Trustees are supposed to release their annual report by Apr. 1 each year. This year, they released their report on June 9. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though, since that report was filled with bad news.
In fact, even items that might initially read as good news in that report ended up being unfavorable.
Case in point: The Social Security Trustees reported that the program took in $1.45 trillion in revenue in 2025. In spite of that, it ended the year with a glaring shortfall.
The numbers didn’t add up
In 2025, Social Security took in $1.32 trillion from net payroll tax contributions, $58 billion from the taxation of benefits, and $69 billion in interest. The problem is that the program’s total expenditures amounted to $1.61 trillion.
Last year, Social Security paid roughly $1.6 trillion in benefits to about 70 million recipients. The agency also spent $7 billion to administer benefits, which was 0.4% of total expenditures.
This disconnect, however, explains why Social Security is headed for trouble. The shortfall the program experienced last year is expected to get worse as the labor force shrinks and more older Americans retire and start claiming their monthly benefits.
Social Security can tap its trust funds to cover the gap between scheduled benefits and incoming revenue while those funds still have money. In fact, that’s why there were no benefit cuts in 2025. But once the trust funds are out of money, benefit cuts may be inevitable.
How lawmakers can fix Social Security
Social Security can’t afford to keep spending more than it takes in. If that pattern continues, the program will have to reduce benefits broadly, which could push countless older Americans into poverty and sentence many more future seniors to a cash-strapped retirement.
The good news is that lawmakers have options for preventing Social Security cuts. But those fixes will come at a cost.
One option is to raise the Social Security tax rate, which is currently 12.4% split evenly between employees and employers. Since payroll taxes are the program’s greatest source of revenue, increasing that 12.4% rate is sure to pump more money into Social Security.
But workers might feel the sting when their net pay shrinks. And if corporations face higher payroll tax rates, it’s hard to say what steps they might be forced to take to compensate.
Lawmakers can also move full retirement age for Social Security to a later age than 67, which is when workers born in or after 1960 can collect their monthly benefits without a reduction. Doing so should, in theory, keep workers in the labor force longer, thereby increasing payroll tax income.
But that change would also inevitably sentence more workers to longer careers even if they’d rather stop working sooner. It could also force some workers to accept reduced Social Security checks if they’re unable to stay at their jobs past age 67.
All told, there was a lot of bad news contained in the most Social Security Trustees Report, so the fact that it was a couple of months late means the public was spared for a brief bit of time. But the reality is that a two-month reporting delay doesn’t change the big picture.
Social Security is in serious need of an overhaul, and lawmakers do not have a lot of time to act. The program is facing benefit cuts as early as 2032. And if Congress doesn’t implement changes soon, Social Security could continue bleeding money like it did last year.
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