Excerpt from the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) newsletter PERSpective
Cost-of-living adjustments for OPERS members in 2023 will be 3 percent for all those eligible to receive the annual benefit increase.
The OPERS COLA is based on a retiree’s initial pension benefit. COLAs will be paid next year to those with a retirement effective date of Dec. 1, 2022, or earlier. COLAs are paid on the anniversary of a retiree’s effective date.
While members with a retirement effective date prior to Jan. 7, 2013, automatically receive a 3 percent adjustment, those with a retirement effective date on or after that date have their COLAs based on the Consumer Price Index-W, the government’s inflation index for urban wage earners and clerical workers.
According to state law, the annual COLA for those retirees is to be based on the change in the CPI-W index from the end of June 2021 to the end of June this year, with a maximum adjustment of 3 percent. With inflation exceeding 3 percent during that period, according to recently released statistics, OPERS’ CPI-based COLA next year will be 3 percent.
OPERS’ inflation-based COLA uses the same index as Social Security. But the time period measured is different, so the adjustments might not always match up.
