Retirees are getting a 3.6% raise in Social Security. People staying in their jobs are getting only 3.4%.

Millions of Social Security recipients will experience a 3.6% increase in their benefits in 2027.

Gabrijelagal/Getty Images Social Security's 3.6% cost-of-living adjustment exceeds recent job stayers' wage growth.

Economist Aaron Terrazas warns inflation could drive economic inequality.

Baby boomers are helping to prop up the economy, as they're in their core retirement spending years.

There's an income premium for job switchers — and for retirees.

The Social Security Administration recently released the cost-of-living adjustment for next year.

About 72 million recipients will experience a 3.6% increase in their benefits in January, higher than the September three-month moving average year-over-year median wage growth for job stayers at 3.4%.

Independent economist Aaron Terrazas said cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries were higher than job-stayers' increases in three of the past six years, the most recent being the 8.7% 2023 increase announced in 2022 amid the post-pandemic inflation spike.

"Retiree income is adjusted with the cost of living, whereas people who are working are mostly compensated according to the cost of labor," Terrazas said.

"For most of the past decades, we've been in a low inflation labor shortage world, so that's worked out in workers' favor, but it feels like that's shifting underneath the surface." The headline consumer price index increased 3.7% from a year ago in September, moving away from the Fed's 2% inflation target but down from the high rates back in 2022.

The Social Security Administration bases the annual cost-of-living adjustment on the average of a related inflation rate during the third quarter of each year.

Have you gotten a raise this year or received Social Security benefits? We're looking to hear how people are doing in today's economy.

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"Indexing incomes to the cost of living rather than cost of labor is a big part of what fueled inflation, the wage-price spiral in the 1970s," Terrazas said.