The good old days: When a COLA was a COLA
By Mike Causey | @mcauseyWFED October 25, 2016 1:00 am
If you are new to government, or just retired from your federal job, you may be used to or not even notice that cost of living adjustments (COLAs) for federal, military and Social Security retirees ain't what they used to be. The COLA due retirees in January 2017 is a record low 0.3 percent. Just a few extra dollars each month for many folks. Retirees didn't get any COLA this year; got 1.7 percent in 2015 and 2013 and 1.5 percent in 2014. The last "big" COLA was the 3.6 percent increase in January 2012. And it followed two years (2010 and 2011) when there was no COLA.
The federal COLAs are larger (sometimes by 100 percent) than those for many private sector retirees who — if they have a pension plan — don't get inflation adjustments of any kind, anytime. But for feds who were promised they'd be protected from inflation in their golden years, the recent glut of microscopic January increases are bewildering. The government says inflation is minimal, primarily because of lower oil prices. It has the Consumer Price Index numbers to prove it. But many seniors say costs for things they must have — often medical and health related — keep going up. Health insurance premiums paid by federal workers and retirees are going up an average of 6.2 percent next year. The average increase in Long Term Care Insurance premiums, the average, is 83 percent.
Long-time feds and people who have been retired for decades are the most disappointed by the years of low-to-zero COLAs because they remember the good old days. Times when COLAs of 8 to 10 percent (sometimes two in one year) were standard operating procedure. In 1980, when inflation was running wild, CSRS retirees got two raises, 6.0 and 7.7 percent in the same year. Congress kept fine-tuning the COLA system, changing how often and when COLAs were paid. When the FERS program began in the late 1980s, those retirees were put on a modified-diet-COLA system that sometimes gave them less, any where from 1 percent to 0.6 percent less than retirees under the older CSRS program that was replaced by FERS. Today only about 4 percent of still-working feds are under CSRS, although the majority of retirees still get full-CSRS COLAs. When there is one.
Federal pay raises that have no connection to the cost-of-living have also gotten smaller. Workers are in line for a 1 percent raise in January 2017 with another 0.6 percent possible for workers in high-wage cities. Non-postal feds got a 1 percent raise in 2014, 2015 and 2016. But they came after a pay freeze in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
So what about the good old days when retirees got two COLAs totaling 13.7 percent and federal workers got a 14.3 percent raise? Where have they gone? Here's the Congressional Research Service's official data from the mid-'60s to the mid-'90s.:
| Effective Date | CSRS Benefit Increase | FERS Benefit Increase | CPI Increase During COLA Measurement Period |
| December 1965 | 6.1% | — | 4.6% |
| January 1967 | 3.9 | — | 3.9 |
| May 1968 | 3.9 | — | 3.9 |
| March 1969 | 3.9 | — | 3.9 |
| November 1969 | 5.0 | — | 4.0 |
| August 1970 | 5.6 | — | 4.6 |
| June 1971 | 4.5 | — | 3.5 |
| July 1972 | 4.8 | — | 3.8 |
| July 1973 | 6.1 | — | 5.1 |
| January 1974 | 5.5 | — | 4.5 |
| July 1974 | 6.3 | — | 5.3 |
| January 1975 | 7.3 | — | 6.3 |
| August 1975 | 5.1 | — | 4.1 |
| March 1976 | 5.4 | — | 4.4 |
| March 1977 | 4.8 | — | 4.8 |
| September 1977 | 4.3 | — | 4.3 |
| March 1978 | 2.4 | — | 2.4 |
| September 1978 | 4.9 | — | 4.9 |
| March 1979 | 3.9 | — | 3.9 |
| September 1979 | 6.9 | — | 6.9 |
| March 1980 | 6.0 | — | 6.0 |
| September 1980 | 7.7 | — | 7.7 |
| March 1981 | 4.4 | — | 4.4 |
| March 1982 | 8.7 | — | 8.7 |
| April 1983 | 3.9 | — | 3.9 |
| December 1984 | 3.5 | — | 3.5 |
| December 1985 | 0.0 | — | 3.1 |
| December 1986 | 1.3 | — | 1.3 |
| December 1987 | 4.2 | — | 4.2 |
| December 1988 | 4.0 | 3.0 | 4.0 |
| December 1989 | 4.7 | 3.7 | 4.7 |
| December 1990 | 5.4 | 4.4 | 5.4 |
| December 1991 | 3.7 | 2.7 | 3.7 |
| December 1992 | 3.0 | 2.0 | 3.0 |
| March 1994 | 2.6 | 2.0 | 2.6 |
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