Until recently, economic researchers were cheering an encouraging trend: Older Americans were staying in the labor force longer and waiting longer to claim their Social Security benefits, aiming to enhance their financial stability in retirement.
Not everyone, of course. Despite financial advisers’ counsel and economists’ hopes, most people still claim their benefits before reaching their designated full retirement age, though that usually means a lifetime of lower monthly payments.
Early claimers might hit an unexpected financial crunch, as Alan Turner did when he lost his job as a museum exhibit designer in 2022. “I haphazardly looked for work, but my prospects weren’t very good,” he said.
For a while Mr. Turner, 69, who lives in New Castle, Del., got by on unemployment benefits and savings, hoping to reach his full retirement age — 66 and a half — before claiming. “It was doable, but it was bleak,” he said. He took his benefits at 64, reducing his Social Security income by about $5,000 a year.
Or people might feel the need to retire earlier than planned. Nancy Mansson, a nuclear medicine technologist in West Hebron, N.Y., found last year that “I was just fried,” she said. “I had to step away,” though she was more than a year short of her full retirement age.
People can claim Social Security retirement benefits as early as 62, but they face substantially reduced payments than if they wait until full retirement age, now 67 for those born in 1960 or later.
Ms. Mansson, 66, sacrificed about $300 a month by claiming early and works at a hospital one day a week to compensate.
Still, economists had documented that Americans were both retiring later and claiming their benefits later — until last year, when “all hell broke loose,” said Alicia Munnell, former director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. In an unprecedented surge, hundreds of thousands more people than usual suddenly filed for retirement benefits.
Why? Understanding what’s happening with older Americans and Social Security requires looking both backward and ahead.
For decades, workers had been retiring at increasingly younger ages; that trend reversed in the 1980s, and the change accelerated in the 1990s. Changes in the Social Security law, which Congress amended in 1983 (“The last time we did anything to Social Security,” Dr. Munnell said, pointedly) provided incentives to work longer.
Most employers shifted from defined pensions to 401(k) plans and discontinued retiree health insurance, additional reasons to stay on the job. Plus, work had become less physically demanding overall, and “health and longevity were increasing,” Dr. Munnell said.
In an analysis the center published last year, the proportion of men who were filing at 62 fell to 26 percent in 2023 from 31 percent in 2019; among women, claiming at 62 dropped to 27 percent from 34 percent. Over the same period, claiming at 67 or later rose to 26 percent from 19 percent for men and to 25 percent from 20 percent for women, a trend that persisted into 2024.
By waiting, “they have more income,” Dr. Munnell said. “They can contribute to their 401(k)s. They have higher Social Security benefits and fewer years to support themselves without income.” Waiting also increases spouses’ eventual survivor benefits. Plus, most beneficiaries pay taxes on their benefits, bolstering both the Social Security system and the federal budget in general.
Delaying until 70, the age for receiving maximum benefits, brings particular rewards. Beyond full retirement age, benefits rise by 8 percent annually.
“It’s an inflation-protected annuity the private sector can’t compete with,” said Jack Smalligan, a senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization. “If you’re healthy and can afford it, it’s the smartest choice.”
But in 2025, he and a colleague noticed an unusual influx of new retirement claims and sounded the alarm. From October 2024 to April 2025, they found, claims jumped by 267,000 compared with the previous year, a 13 percent surge. Typically, “the fluctuations were more in the 2 to 3 percent range,” Mr. Smalligan said.
Population growth and adjustments for a small group of public employees couldn’t explain the size of that leap. “It was really a reaction to the turmoil at Social Security during that period,” Mr. Smalligan said.
The Trump administration, with its Department of Government Efficiency, was circulating false claims of widespread fraud, slashing thousands of Social Security Administration staff members and threatening to close field offices. “A whole mixture of negative signals about Social Security were coming from the White House,” Mr. Smalligan said.
“Having people go at the government with a chain saw was not helpful,” Dr. Munnell agreed, referring to a much-publicized stunt in which the DOGE chief Elon Musk appeared onstage brandishing the tool at a conservative conference. He has called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
Perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising that last year so many older Americans decided they’d better grab their benefits while they could.
(Something beneficiaries may not know: Those who regret claiming at full retirement age but before age 70 can direct Social Security to suspend their benefits, then reclaim them later when the payments are higher, with adjustments for money already received. “It’s not irrevocable,” Mr. Smalligan said.)
In a 2021 study by the Boston College center, researchers showed more than 3,100 participants headlines about Social Security. One referred fairly neutrally to “a long-term financing shortfall,” while others used scarier phrases like “deplete its reserves” and “headed toward insolvency.” The accompanying short text stayed the same.
“With the headlines that were more fear-inducing, people tended to say they would claim earlier, about a year earlier,” than the control group reading the neutral headline, said Gal Wettstein, associate director of health and insurance at the center and the study co-author.
By 2025, this was no longer an academic experiment. Negative media coverage was “overwhelming,” he said. “People saw it every day.”
And now?
A year later, claiming has reverted to more normal levels. From October 2025 to April 2026, new Social Security claims fell by 235,000, about a 10 percent drop. “Almost an exact reversal,” Mr. Smalligan said. The decline “effectively canceled out the surge.”
That doesn’t mean Social Security is out of the woods. Without congressional action, it will deplete its retirement trust fund by late 2032, the latest trustees’ report said. By law, beneficiaries will still get payments if that happens, but they could be up to 22 percent lower.
And despite some rehiring at the agency, “we continue to hear reports of difficulty being able to get through on the phone or make an in-person appointment,” Mr. Smalligan said, noting that Social Security’s administrative budget has been underfunded for many years.
A representative for the Social Security Administration said that the agency has provided the best customer service in its history, helping customers however they seek assistance, by phone, online or in person. Asked about the reasons behind the spike in early benefit claims, the agency did not provide a response.
In the past, Congress has come through with 11th-hour rescues. This round, Senators Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, are preparing bipartisan legislation that, among other remedies, would lift the cap that exempts wages over $184,500 from payroll taxes. Eliminating the cap would inject $3 trillion into the system over 10 years, according to the Social Security trustees.
A “solvency plan” published by the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit research and public policy organization, calls for that, too. “Of the revenue options, that one has the broadest base of acceptance” among political leaders and the public, said Mr. Smalligan, a co-author of the report.
For now, though, “the ambiguity about Social Security is making Americans anxious and unhappy,” Dr. Munnell said.
Sam Delson, a former California state employee in Elk Grove, Calif., retired five years ago at 61. With his state pension, he figured he could afford to take Social Security benefits at 70 and he still intends to.
Most of the time. “I’m not expecting the system to fall apart, but I’m not as absolutely certain as I used to be — some doubt has crept in,” Mr. Delson said. “I’m thinking 67 wouldn’t be so bad.”
The New Old Age is produced through a partnership with KFF Health News.
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