Evidence

Methodology

Scope

The 2025 CPS Annual Social and Economic Supplement reports income received during calendar year 2024. Wage excess is calculated person by person as the released wage value minus $168,600, floored at zero, then aggregated with the official person weights.

Birth cohorts and uncertainty

The point birth year is 2025 minus age at survey. The true birth year can be one year earlier depending on whether the respondent had a birthday before the March survey. The dashboard groups those estimates into five-year cohorts to reduce distracting volatility from sparse single-year cells. Standard errors use all 160 CPS ASEC replicate weights and the Census successive-difference variance factor, with 90% confidence intervals.

Confidence labels

The table’s confidence label is a plain-language reliability guide for each wage-excess interval, based on the number of unweighted above-cap CPS records and the relative standard error implied by the published interval. N/A means no above-cap sample cases. Low means fewer than 30 cases or relative standard error above 30%. Medium means at least 30 cases with relative standard error no greater than 30%. High is reserved for at least 100 cases with relative standard error no greater than 15%. These labels describe statistical precision, not certainty that the estimate is correct.

One-year pilot proposal

The proposal calculator models a fixed pilot cohort of 2024 wage-and-salary workers with earnings at or above the taxable maximum. Self-employment income and SSA’s 22.119 million self-employed-worker count are excluded. The model applies one selected OASDI contribution rate to one year of wage excess, allocates that contribution among cash, bonds, and equities according to the selected bucket years, and estimates one year of investment return. It then distributes the fixed cohort’s refundable principal across retirement years using CPS birth-year shares. It does not add future workers or contributions and does not model population growth, wage growth, mortality, retirement behavior, taxes, fees, inflation, benefit credits, or market volatility.

The default 12.4% rate combines the 6.2% employee and 6.2% employer OASDI shares and assumes both shares become refundable pilot principal credited to the worker. A 6.2% employee-only illustration is available by changing the input. The pilot returns the selected share of principal at the assumed retirement age; modeled investment earnings remain in the reserve.

The default 30-year reserve allocation uses 5 years of cash, 10 years of bonds, and 15 years of equities. Normalizing those values produces allocations of 16.67%, 33.33%, and 50%. At assumed returns of 2.5%, 4.0%, and 7.5%, the initial weighted return assumption is 5.50%. The 30-year total is a conservative planning horizon for a government program, not a modeled withdrawal rule.

Annual cash-flow sequence

The annual ledger begins with the prior year’s closing bucket balances. It adds the one-time contribution in 2024 only, pays that year’s refundable principal from cash first and then bonds and equities if required, applies each bucket’s fixed annual return to its post-payout balance, and rebalances the closing reserve to the target allocation. Returns compound annually because each year begins with the preceding closing balance. Rebalancing is assumed to have no transaction costs or tax consequences.

Fixed annual returns are a simplified deterministic demonstration. The model includes no volatility, fees, inflation, taxes, mortality, changing asset assumptions, or later worker cohorts. A payout that exceeds the available reserve is reported as unfunded rather than producing a negative bucket balance.

Single-year mode displays the contribution, return, payout, and workers for the selected year. Cumulative mode aggregates those flows from 2024 through the selected year; it does not add new cohorts or contributions. In both modes, bucket cards and the final waterfall bar are closing balances as of the selected year-end. The waterfall is not a forecast of trust-fund solvency or net fiscal benefit.

Worker-count benchmarks

The raw CPS estimate of approximately 11.0 million wage-and-salary workers at or above the cap is used as the pilot population. It is comparable in concept to SSA’s 11.523 million workers at the taxable maximum in 2023. SSA’s separate 22.119 million figure counts workers with self-employment earnings and must not be interpreted as workers above the cap.

Important limitations

CPS values are survey-reported, public-use high incomes are disclosure protected, and CPS earnings do not perfectly match OASDI-covered administrative earnings. Raw estimates are always retained. Calibration is presented only as a labeled scenario.