Your benefit amount is based on the quarter with your highest wages earned within the base period.
A base period covers 12 months and is divided into four consecutive quarters. The base period includes wages subject to SDI tax that were paid about 5 to 18 months before your disability claim began. The base period does not include wages paid at the time your disability begins. For a DI claim to be valid, you must have at least $300 in wages in the base period. The following information may be used to determine the base period for your claim.
If a claim begins on or after January 1, 2022:
January, February, or March:
The base period is the 12 months ending last September 30.
Example: A claim beginning February 14, 2022, uses a base period of October 1, 2020, through September 30, 2021.
April,
May, or June:
The base period is the 12 months ending last December 31.
Example: A claim beginning June 20, 2022, uses a base period of January 1, 2021, through December 31, 2021.
July, August, or September:
The base period is the 12 months ending last March 31.
Example: A claim beginning September 27, 2022, uses a base period of April 1, 2021, through March 31, 2022.
October, November, or December:
The base period is the 12
months ending last June 30.
Example: A claim beginning November 2, 2022, uses a base period of July 1, 2021, through June 30, 2022.
Mathematically speaking, Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) is calculated in the same way as Social Security retirement benefits. Both are based on your record of “covered earnings” — work income on which you paid Social Security taxes.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) starts by figuring your average monthly income across your working life, adjusted for historical wage growth. It then plugs that figure into a formula to determine your primary insurance amount (PIA), also known as your full retirement benefit.
The PIA formula is progressive — weighted to provide proportionally higher benefits to lower earners — and it’s the same whether you’re claiming retirement or disability benefits. What differs is how much income data goes into determining your full benefit and when you can collect it.
For retirees, the SSA uses the 35 highest-earning years to calculate the monthly average income and PIA. (Only yearly earnings up to an annually adjusted cap are counted. In 2022, the cap is $147,000.) You become eligible to claim that full amount at full retirement age, which is 66 and 4 months for people born in 1956 and is gradually rising to 67. Benefits are reduced if you claim earlier — by as much as 30 percent if you start taking them at the minimum age of 62.
Because a worker may become disabled before reaching retirement age, Social Security uses a different time frame to determine the primary insurance amount for SSDI claims. The number of years of income used to figure the benefit depends on the age you became unable to work due to an injury or illness — the SSA’s basic definition of disability.
Exactly how much of your earnings history is included depends on arcane Social Security terms like “elapsed years” and “computation years,” but basically, here’s how it works.
- The SSA counts up the number of years from the year you turned 22 to the year before you became disabled .
- It throws out between one and five years (the longer you’ve been working, the more “dropout years”).
- The resulting number is how many of your highest-earning years will go into the PIA calculation.
Suppose you’ve been working without interruption since age 21 but are sidelined at 60 by advanced rheumatoid arthritis. Applying its computation rules, Social Security would use your 33 best years of income, indexed for wage trends, to figure your PIA. If your disability struck at 50, it would be your 23 highest-earning years; at 40, the top 15 years.
Regardless of your age, if your SSDI claim is approved, you’ll be awarded your full benefit — 100 percent of your PIA.
Still, that full payment tends to be lower for SSDI recipients than for retirees, in part because your disability can cost you higher-earning years that would boost your calculated benefit. The average monthly retirement and SSDI benefits in January 2022 were about $1,614 and $1,359, respectively, according to SSA data. If you have an online My Social Security account, you can check your projected retirement and disability benefit amounts.
Want to know how much SSDI pays? Here's how Social Security calculates your SSDI benefits.
How much your SSDI (Social Security disability) benefit will be is based on your "covered earnings"—the wages that you paid Social Security taxes on—prior to becoming disabled.
What is SSDI? Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) is the federal insurance program that provides benefits to qualified workers who can no longer work. To be eligible, you must be insured under the program (by having paid FICA or SECA taxes over a number of years) and you must meet the Social Security Administration's definition of disabled. SSI payments, on the other hand, aren't based on past earnings.
Your SSDI benefits may be reduced if you get disability payments from other sources, such as workers' comp, but regular income won't affect your SSDI payment amount.
How Much Does SSDI Pay?
The Social Security Administration (SSA) uses your Average Indexed Monthly Earnings (AIME) and Primary Insurance Amount (PIA) to calculate your SSDI benefits. The formula Social Security uses is quite complicated, and most people won't be interested in trying to calculate their benefits on their own, especially because Social Security can give you a good estimate.
Average SSDI Payment
To give you an idea of how much SSDI pays, for 2022, the average SSDI payment $1,358 per month, but those whose income was fairly high in recent years can receive up to $3,345.
SSDI payments don't vary by state; your SSDI payments will stay the same no matter which state you live in.
Calculating SSDI Benefits
If you're interested in how Social Security calculates your AIME and PIA, here's how.
Average Indexed Monthly Earnings
First, the SSA will determine your AIME. To do this, the SSA will adjust, or index, your lifetime earnings to account for the increase in general wages that happened during the years you worked. This is done to make sure that the payments you get in the future mirror this rise.
The SSA will use up to 35 of your working years in the calculation. The SSA takes the years with the highest indexed earnings, adds them together, and divides them by the total number of months for those years. The average is then rounded down to reach your AIME.
You can see an example of how the SSA calculates an AIME on the SSA's website.
Primary Insurance Amount
Your Primary Insurance Amount (PIA) is the base amount of your benefits. The SSA uses the total of three fixed percentages of your AIME to determine your PIA. The dollar amounts that result from the calculation are called "bend points." Bend points are changed each year to reflect the national average wage index.
The PIA for someone who becomes eligible for SSDI benefits in 2022 is the sum (total) of the following:
- 90% of the first $1,024 of average indexed monthly earnings
- 32% of the average indexed monthly earnings over $1,024 through $6,172, and
- 15% of the average indexed monthly earnings over $6,172.
If the sum of the percentages isn't a multiple of $0.10, it will be rounded to the next lower multiple of $0.10.
Check Your Social Security Statement
The easiest way to calculate SSDI benefits is to go to www.ssa.gov/mystatement, log in, and check your benefits statement. It will tell you exactly how much SSDI you will get if you become disabled this year.
Amount of Disability Backpay
By the time they get an approval letter from Social Security, most disability applicants are eligible for back payments of benefits. The number of months of back payments you'll receive will depend on when you applied for SSDI and the date the SSA decided you became disabled (called your "established onset date," or EOD.) How much you'll receive in total SSDI backpay depends on your monthly SSDI benefit amount.
In addition to getting payments going back to your application date, you can get up to 12 months of retroactive payments for the year prior to your application date (or your "protective filing date," discussed below)—if you were disabled that long ago. You can't get benefits for the months before your EOD (again, your disability onset date).
Five-Month Waiting Period
Once you are approved for benefits, there is a five-month waiting period, starting at your disability onset date, before you can be paid benefits. This means that, to receive the maximum amount of backpay (going back for the 12 months before your application date), you must have an EOD of at least 17 months prior to your application date (or your protective filing date). (The one exception to this rule is for ALS; claimants who have been diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, do not have a five-month waiting period.)
Protective Filing Date
You can establish a protective filing date (PFD) by making a written statement to the SSA that you intend on filing for disability benefits. A PFD is also established when you begin an online application, even if you don't complete it. If you want to learn more, read our article about back payments.
Offsets for Other Disability Income
Some disability payments, such as workers' compensation settlements, can reduce your SSDI benefit amount. These are called "offsets." Most other disability benefits, however, such as veterans benefits or payments made by private insurance, do not affect your SSDI benefit amounts.
Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for Disability Benefits
Every year everyone's Social Security benefits are recalculated to adjust to the increasing cost of living. How much of an increase depends on the annual COLA amount for SSDI, which is determined by increases in the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
Updated January 10, 2022