What were the 2026 substantial gainful activity (SGA) dollar limits for non-blind and blind SSDI applicants?
Executive summary
The Social Security Administration’s Substantial Gainful Activity (SGA) monthly limits for 2026 rose to $1,690 for non‑blind disabled individuals and $2,830 for statutorily blind individuals, up from $1,620 and $2,700 in 2025 respectively (multiple reporting and law‑firm summaries) [1][2]. These figures are the standard SGA earnings thresholds the SSA uses to judge whether work activity counts as disabling for SSDI eligibility [3][4].
1. What the numbers mean: SGA as an eligibility gate
SGA is a dollar threshold of countable monthly earnings the SSA treats as evidence that a claimant can perform “substantial gainful activity”; exceeding the threshold generally leads the agency to find the claimant no longer disabled for SSDI purposes [3][5]. For 2026 the key thresholds reported across advocacy, law‑firm, and disability‑service outlets are $1,690 per month for non‑blind applicants and $2,830 per month for statutorily blind applicants [1][6][2].
2. Where these 2026 figures come from: tied to wage indexes and COLA
The annual SGA adjustments flow from changes in national wages and Social Security’s cost‑of‑living processes; the 2026 increase aligns with a 2.8% COLA and related wage‑index adjustments that raise multiple Social Security program limits [1][2][7]. Legal and disability‑service summaries published around SSA announcements uniformly report the same dollar amounts for 2026 [1][6][2].
3. Consistency and sourcing: official SSA pages and secondary reports
The SSA maintains SGA tables and automated determinations pages that set and explain SGA amounts [4][3]. Secondary sources — law firms, disability advocates, and informational sites — reiterate the $1,690/$2,830 figures for 2026; these secondary sources cite the same SSA adjustments and the October 2025 COLA announcement that produced the increases [1][2][7].
4. Practical effects for SSDI applicants and beneficiaries
Raising the SGA amount gives disabled workers slightly more room to earn without jeopardizing SSDI eligibility; beneficiaries testing work can use the Trial Work Period and other SSA provisions to protect benefits while attempting employment [8][9]. Advocates warn, however, that crossing the SGA line outside protected work‑test months can trigger benefit cessation, and that the “blind” threshold is intentionally higher because SSA treats statutory blindness differently during eligibility determinations [5][9].
5. Where nuance matters: countable earnings and exclusions
SGA determinations do not always equal gross pay: SSA counts “countable earnings” after allowable deductions (for example impairment‑related work expenses and other exclusions) when assessing SGA (available sources do not mention specific deduction rules in the provided snippets; SSA explanatory pages exist but are not quoted in the search results). Several consumer‑facing guides caution beneficiaries to understand how reported earnings, benefits offsets, and trial work months interact with SGA thresholds [8][6].
6. Policy context and competing viewpoints
Some advocacy groups highlight structural problems with SGA’s “earnings cliff” — small increases in pay can abruptly end benefits — and have proposed phased‑out approaches for blind workers; the National Federation of the Blind has advocated a gradual phase‑out policy starting in 2026 in legislation referenced by advocates [10]. Other sources frame the annual SGA increases as a routine inflation‑tracking adjustment that modestly expands work flexibility for beneficiaries [2][7].
7. Limitations and what I did not find in these results
The provided search results consistently report the 2026 SGA numbers above, but do not include a direct SSA press release page with an explicit “2026 SGA = …” headline in the snippets shown here; the SSA’s official SGA tables and COLA announcement pages are referenced but their precise text is not quoted in these excerpts [4][3]. Detailed methodological notes about how specific deductions are applied to compute “countable earnings” in SGA determinations are not present in the supplied snippets — for those procedural specifics see SSA guidance directly (not found in current reporting).
If you want, I can pull the SSA’s official 2026 SGA table text or link the SSA COLA/SGA pages for direct sourcing and to show how SSA defines countable earnings and work exclusions [4][3].