The Social Security Administration (SSA) counted 70,451,490 people receiving benefits on December 31, 2025. Its comparable year-end count for 1980 was 35,526,086—an increase of about 98.3%, making the 2025 total roughly 1.98 times the 1980 figure. By this measure, the number has almost doubled.
What the year-end count includes
SSA’s Social Security Beneficiary Statistics table counts beneficiaries receiving benefits on December 31. The 2025 total comprises 62,287,759 people in Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and 8,163,731 disabled workers and dependents in Disability Insurance (DI).
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That means the total is not a count of retirees alone. OASI includes survivors and dependents as well as people receiving retirement benefits, and the DI portion includes disabled workers and dependents.
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| Reference date | Beneficiaries receiving benefits |
|---|---|
| December 31, 1980 | 35,526,086 |
| December 31, 2025 | 70,451,490 |
| Increase | 34,925,404, or about 98.3% |
The percentage increase is calculated from the two SSA figures; it is not a separately published SSA statistic. A full doubling of the 1980 count would be 71,052,172, so the 2025 figure falls 600,682 short.
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What this statistic does—and does not—measure
The figures are point-in-time counts: they show how many beneficiaries were receiving benefits on December 31 of each year. They are not an annual unduplicated count of everyone who received at least one payment at any time during the year. SSA says the table excludes transitionally uninsured beneficiaries; those benefits are initially paid from the OASI Trust Fund and later reimbursed from the Treasury’s general fund.
The count also is not the share of the U.S. population receiving benefits, an average benefit amount, or a measure of Social Security’s financial condition. Each requires a different statistic and, for population shares, a population denominator.
Does the total include Supplemental Security Income?
No. Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a separate program, not part of this OASDI count. SSA treats OASDI—Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance—as Social Security and reports SSI separately in its statistical publications. Adding SSI recipients would require a separately defined count that accounts for any people counted in both programs. See the SSA statistical publications.
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SSA’s Annual Statistical Supplement 2026, Table 5.A4, reports 35,584,955 beneficiaries for 1980, rather than 35,526,086. The tables present distinct series: Table 5.A4 covers OASDI beneficiaries in current-payment status, while the Beneficiary Statistics table is titled as a count of beneficiaries receiving benefits on December 31. For the near-doubling comparison above, both endpoints come from the same beneficiary-statistics series rather than mixing figures from different tables. The supplement is available from SSA’s Annual Statistical Supplement 2026 page.
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