The pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have pushed the U.S. economy into a recession, leaving 20 million unemployed Americans who, along with their employers, are no longer contributing the taxes that are funneled into the Social Security Trust Fund on their behalf. 

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania published a report in late May that the Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance Trust Fund, which includes two separate trusts — one for retirees and one for disabled individuals — could be depleted as much as four years earlier than expected because of the impact of the pandemic, in 2032. 

Pre-retirees born in 1960 may suffer another blow to benefits. That's because the Social Security Administration employs a complicated formula to calculate benefits, which includes using the top 35 years of a retiree's earnings, adjusted by an indexing factor. That factor, in turn, is based on the Average Wage Index for the year an individual turns 60, which will be 2020 for those born in 1960. 

Job losses and declines in average wages this year due to the pandemic will affect the average wage index, which has risen almost every year since the 1950s, according to Wade Pfau, director of the Retirement Income Certified Professional (RICP) program at the American College of Financial Services. The index fell in 2009 but only slightly, according to Pfau.

"We don't know what will happen this year but if the average wage index has a dramatic drop, then suddenly those born in 1960 would have a lot lower benefit than those born in 1959," said Pfau.

Another study from Wharton said Social Security benefits for those beneficiaries could decline by 13% and "smaller benefit reductions" were possible for those born after 1960 "at least until average economy-wide wages recover to their previously projected levels." The study assumed a 15% decline in the Social Security Administration's measure of average wages for 2020.

A more immediate concern and one that will affect all Social Security beneficiaries is the expectation of a near-zero cost-of-living adjustment for 2021. The COLA, which is tied to CPI inflation, may be half of this year's COLA, which was just 1.6%, said Heather Schreiber, president and founder of HLS Retirement Consulting, who also participated in the webinar. The Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group to protect Social Security, Medicare and retired veterans benefits, has reported that the recent plunge in oil prices has "all but wiped out" the prospect of a Social Security COLA for next year.

Assuming there is no fix coming for a while, advisors need "to navigate what-if scenarios … [and] have alternative scenarios in place" because of that risk, said Schreiber. These scenarios could include including a 25% decline in benefits as well as no change when calculating future Social Security benefits in clients' retirement plans. Schreiber added that there's a lack of software available for financial advisors doing such calculations.

Looking longer term, Conrad, who co-chaired the Bipartisan Policy Center Commission on Retirement Security and Personal Savings, said any fix to Social Security needs to involve increasing revenues and reducing benefits. The consensus of the commission was to do more on the revenue side.

"We have such a big hole to fill that you're probably not going to get bipartisan agreement unless you work both sides of the equation," Conrad said.

The 152-page BPC report released in 2016 recommended raising the FICA rate slightly along with the income subject to FICA taxes and the full retirement age. It also recommended adjusting benefits to provide more to lower income beneficiaries and less to those with very high incomes and indexing the Social Security COLA to the chained CPI, which would have the effect of reducing the inflation adjustment. 

"We have these big challenges like Social Security and our representatives in Washington are not being sufficiently serious about dealing with these things," Conrad said. He urged all those who tuned into the webinar to appeal to their congressional members to work on fixing Social Security.

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