Social Security benefits are often thought to be something freely given to anyone retiring. But that isn’t true. In order to earn these benefits, individuals must put in years of hard work, which then translates into work credits.

Unfortunately, it seems that these are getting more and more difficult to earn.

How to Earn Work Credits

To qualify for retirement benefits, individuals must accumulate 40 work credits. These can be earned by paying a certain amount of taxes to the Social Security program.

In total, an individual can only earn up to four credits in a given year, regardless of how much they pay into the program. This means that individuals must provide a minimum of 10 years of work to qualify for Social Security retirement benefits.

Rising Threshold

The amount an individual must contribute to the Social Security program to earn a work credit changes every year. In 2021, workers needed to earn $1,470 to earn a single work credit.

However, for 2022 this is increasing to $1,510. This means, in order to max out the number of work credits, an individual would need a total of $6,040 in earnings subject to the Social Security tax.

Work Credits Mean Social Security is Not Welfare

The continued commitment needed to qualify for Social Security benefits in retirement means that Social Security is not a “Welfare” program as many seem to think. Rather, by claiming Social Security is such, individuals are belittling the hard work and time beneficiaries already put into the workforce.

We must put an end to this correlation—the requirement of work credits inherently means Social Security is not a “Welfare” program and it is time those with influence understand this.

Our bill, The Senior Citizens Bill of Rights provides seven guarantees to senior citizens. Of these is the guarantee that elected officials and federal employees cannot refer to Social Security as a “Welfare” program.