The adjustments, which are designed to help Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments keep pace with inflation, are calculated each year based on recent increases in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), which itself is one of several price indexes calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CPI-W, essentially, is a measure of the change in prices “for a market basket of consumer goods and services,” the BLS writes.
