Your wages after age 60 have an outsize effect on how big your Social Security benefit will be.
No matter what age you start collecting Social Security, the size of your monthly check is linked to something called the Primary Insurance Amount, your projected monthly benefit at full retirement age. So ideally, you’d want your PIA to be as big as possible.
Wages in your 60s will continue to lift your PIA. This is particularly true of those who left the workforce for years to raise children or care for family members. But even top earners on track to receive the maximum Social Security benefit can increase their PIA by working in their 60s or beyond, as it can have a big effect, no matter your age.
People already have some control of how much money they get. The size of the payouts depend on how soon a retiree starts collecting them. Suppose someone starts collecting benefits in 2026 after hitting the salary cap for every year since they turned 22. According to the Social Security Administration, if they retire at their full retirement age that year, they will receive $4,152 a month. Retiring at age 62 in 2026 would yield a benefit of $2,969. And a person starting to collect benefits at age 70 would receive $5,181.
People can do even better as a result of the arcane way that the Social Security Administration calculates PIAs. It takes a person’s 35 highest-earning years, adjusted for national wage growth, and divides them by 420 (35 times 12) to calculate their average indexed monthly earnings (AIME).
It then divides this number into three parts. For 2026, Social Security benefits replace 90% of the first $1,286 in AIME, 32% of the AIME between $1,286 and $7,749, and 15% of the AIME above that amount. It is a progressive system in which Social Security aims to replace almost all the income for lower-paid workers and declining percentages for higher-paid workers.
A quirk is that salaries after age 60 aren’t indexed for inflation. This sounds like a bad thing, but it actually has the opposite effect. It ends up increasing your AIME if wages keep going up and you keep working.
Confused? Consider someone born in 1965 who started working at age 16 and hit the salary cap every year. Because of the nominal wage adjustments, it would be equivalent to having earned the salary cap of $176,100 in 2025, the year he or she turned 60, for 35 years.
After age 60, Social Security stops the nominal wage inflation adjustments and uses unadjusted numbers. So if this person hit the 2026 salary cap of $184,500, his or her 35 top years would now contain 34 years at $176,100 and one year at $184,500. If in 2027, the cap rises to $190,000, the top 35 years would include 33 years at $176,100, one at $184,500, and one at $190,000. The actual 2027 number won’t be known until October.
Over time, this lifts your AIME and PIA, slowly lifting your monthly benefit in addition to the annual inflation adjustments.
If that person had stopped working at age 60, he or she would have an annual Social Security benefit of $51,593 ($4,299 per month) at the full retirement age of 67, if he or she kept working and earning above the salary cap, the benefit would keep rising.
Assuming 2.25% annual growth in the wage cap, if this person kept working to age 65 and hit the limit each year, the annual benefit would rise to $53,320. If he or she kept working to 70, the benefit would rise to $53,839; to age 75, $56,319; and to age 80, $59,917. All these numbers are for the benefit at full retirement age; they don’t reflect the additional money workers get by waiting beyond that to collect Social Security.
The faster wages rise after your 60th birthday, the more that continuing to work lifts your benefit.
For workers who have worked fewer than 35 years, the effect of continuing to work in their 60s is much bigger.
If that person stopped working at 60, he or she would receive $40,135 at full retirement age. But if the person kept working to 65, they would get $45,246; to 70, $50,459; to age 75; $55,949; and to age 80, $59,675.
All of this can be confusing, so if you’d like to speak with a financial advisor to learn more, we offer complimentary 1st meetings with our advisors. Schedule one today, and we’ll get to work!
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