Social Security figures your benefit from its earnings record, not your pay stubs, so a year that never posted can lower every check. Pull your record from a my Social Security account and compare each year with your W-2s. Fix errors fast, since a year gets hard to correct after about three years.
Records go wrong in ordinary ways, like a W-2 filed under a misspelled name or a mistyped Social Security number, or a name change after a marriage or divorce that never reached Social Security. Either way, the pay can go missing from your record.
Only what’s on your record counts. Social Security averages your highest 35 years of earnings, and a missing year goes in as a zero unless a 36th year can replace it. Take a worker who has exactly 35 years at $60,000 in today’s dollars, claims at full retirement age, and collects for 20 years. By our math, one missing year costs about $46 a month. That’s roughly $550 a year, or about $11,000 over those 20 years, before cost-of-living raises.
Sign in at ssa.gov/myaccount and open your full earnings record. Match each year to box 3 of that year’s W-2s, the Social Security wages line. In years with two or more jobs, add the boxes together, up to that year’s maximum taxable earnings. For self-employed years, use the net earnings on your Schedule SE. Last year may not have posted yet, which is normal.
If a year comes up short, gather W-2s, pay stubs, or tax returns as proof and call Social Security at 1-800-772-1213. The general deadline to correct a year falls three years, three months, and 15 days after it ends, which works out to mid-April of the fourth year that follows. A written request on Form SSA-7008, filed before then, keeps the year open until Social Security decides. After that, a fix has to fit one of a short list of exceptions.
Earnings from a job you never held signal a different problem. They can mean someone is working under your Social Security number, so report it at IdentityTheft.gov and ask Social Security to remove the earnings.
Then repeat the check every August, when Social Security suggests confirming last year’s amount. Your Statement’s benefit estimates are built from the same record, and they’re the numbers to use when you decide whether delaying Social Security to 70 pays off.
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