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How to Check Your Social Security Earnings Record for Errors
Why this matters: your benefit is calculated from your highest 35 years of earnings. If an employer misreported a year — or a name change scrambled your record — that year may show $0, and it quietly lowers your check for the rest of your life. The fix is free; finding the error is the hard part.
How errors happen
- An employer reported wages under a wrong name or Social Security number (common after marriage or divorce name changes).
- Self-employment income never made it from a tax return to the record.
- A W-2 was simply never filed or was lost.
How to check your record — 10 minutes
- Sign in (or sign up) at my Social Security — you, not anyone else, should do this.
- Open your Social Security Statement and find the earnings table — one line per year of your working life.
- Scan for years that look wrong: a $0 in a year you worked, or a number far below what you actually earned.
- Check the most recent two years too — earnings post with a delay, but older gaps are red flags.
Found something wrong?
Gather proof for that year — W-2, tax return, or pay stubs — and contact SSA at 1-800-772-1213 or your local office to request a correction. There is no fee. Corrections can raise your future benefit, and in some cases your current one.
Coming in the CheckDay beta: upload the Statement file you download from ssa.gov yourself, and CheckDay scans all 35+ years for suspicious gaps automatically — never asking for your SSN or your ssa.gov login. Tick Statement upload early access when you join the waitlist.
Your benefits, explained for you
Join the free CheckDay beta — your 2027 COLA number by email on October 14, plus plain-English alerts when the rules change.
Join the free beta →