Windfall Elimination Provision
The Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) was a Social Security Administration formula that reduced the Social Security retirement or disability benefits of workers who spent portions of their careers in employment not covered by Social Security while also earning enough Social Security-covered credits to qualify for benefits, before its repeal by the Social Security Fairness Act in January 2025.
The standard Social Security benefit formula replaces a higher percentage of lower lifetime earnings than higher earnings — a progressive formula designed to provide proportionally greater retirement security to lower-wage workers. Workers who spent significant portions of their careers in non-Social Security-covered government employment often appeared to have low Social Security earnings records, triggering the favorable low-earner formula even though their total retirement income was substantial because of a government pension. The WEP modified that formula to reduce what policymakers considered an unintended windfall.
Under the WEP, the 90 percent replacement factor applied to the first bend point of the average indexed monthly earnings was reduced to as low as 40 percent, depending on how many years of substantial Social Security-covered earnings the worker had accumulated. Workers with 30 or more years of substantial covered earnings were exempt from the WEP reduction; those with 20 or fewer years of substantial covered earnings faced the maximum reduction.
The maximum WEP reduction for 2024 was $587 per month for workers who turned 62 in that year. The reduction could not exceed one-half of the pension from non-covered employment. State and federal government employees, foreign-service workers, and railroad workers under certain circumstances were the populations most commonly affected.
The Social Security Fairness Act signed in January 2025 repealed both the WEP and the GPO. Affected workers and their survivors became entitled to recalculated higher benefits, with retroactive payments for the period following the law's effective date. Individuals previously subject to the WEP should contact the Social Security Administration to confirm their revised benefit amount and the status of any retroactive payment.