South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Monique Morrissey of the Economic Policy Institute analyzes the latest projections from the Social Security trustees report.

If nothing is done to shore up the system’s finances, the trust fund will be exhausted in 2033, three years earlier than projected in last year’s report (p.3). When the trust fund is exhausted, current revenues will still be sufficient to pay 75 percent of promised benefits (p. 11). Even in this worst-case scenario, future benefits will be higher than current benefits in inflation-adjusted terms, but because wages are projected to rise over time, these benefit levels will replace a shrinking share of pre-retirement income.
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The projected shortfall over the next 75 years is 2.67 percent of taxable payroll (0.96 percent of GDP). This is 0.44 percentage points larger than in last year’s report (p. 4 and Table VI.F4 on p. 197). Slightly more than one-tenth of the deterioration (0.5 percentage points) is due to the changing valuation period, and the rest is due to updated data and near-term projections and changes in longer-term assumptions.
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The single biggest factor is the weak economic recovery, which has a significant impact on the short-term outlook (slower growth in average earnings, low interest rates, and high unemployment)….