45 years of COLAs. One unmistakable pattern.
From 1981 through 2008, North Carolina state retirees got a real, permanent cost-of-living adjustment almost every single year. Since 2009, the system has fundamentally changed — and the chart below tells you exactly when, exactly how, and exactly how much your pension's purchasing power has been allowed to erode.
A 45-year record, in one chart.
Below is every cost-of-living adjustment granted to North Carolina state retirees since 1981 — straight from the official records of the NC Retirement Systems Division. Permanent COLAs that compound year after year are shown in blue. One-time bonuses that disappear when the check clears are shown in gold. Years with no increase at all are shown as gaps.
The line down the middle marks 2009 — the year the music stopped.
A 45-year promise, told in numbers.
The 28 years before 2009 and the 18 years since look like two different retirement systems entirely. Same statutes. Same legislature. Same retirees who paid into the same system. But the treatment of those retirees changed completely.
Every COLA in this era was permanent. Every COLA compounded on top of every previous COLA, for the rest of the retiree's life. A 4% raise in 1990 was still paying that retiree a 4% larger pension in 2008 — and it was still being multiplied by every subsequent COLA along the way. This is how cost-of-living protection is supposed to work.
In 18 years, the total permanent base-pension increase for a retiree from 2009 has been about 3% — total. Cumulative. Over the entire period. Inflation over that same period exceeded 50%. Every "bonus" you may remember receiving — the $1,200 check in 2022, the supplement in 2023 — added nothing to your monthly pension.
A bonus is a one-night stand. A COLA is a marriage.
That comparison is not subtle, and it is not meant to be. The mathematical difference between a one-time bonus and a permanent COLA is so large, and so consistently misunderstood, that it deserves to be stated plainly.
When the legislature gives you a 4% one-time bonus, you receive 4% of your annual pension as a single check. The check arrives. You spend it or save it. Your monthly pension on the first of the following month is exactly what it was before.
When the legislature gives you a 4% permanent COLA, your monthly pension goes up by 4% — and stays up by 4%, plus any future COLAs that compound on top of it, for the rest of your life.
This is why the choice between bonuses and COLAs is not a budget question — it is a generational choice about how to treat the people who served North Carolina. Bonuses are cheap for the legislature in the long run. COLAs are not. That is the entire reason the legislature has consistently chosen bonuses since 2018.
It is also the entire reason your pension's purchasing power has eroded so badly. The bonuses you remember receiving were never going to make you whole.
Tell your legislators what 18 years of stagnation has cost you.
The chart is the evidence. The bonuses were not enough. Make them hear it.
Data Sources
- "TSERS Retiree Increases or Supplements Since 1981" — NC Retirement Systems Division, updated December 2024 (myNCRetirement.gov)
- TSERS Actuarial Valuation, December 31, 2024 — NC Retirement Systems Division
- Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, January 2009 through December 2025, for inflation reference
- All COLA percentages shown reflect the official record of permanent benefit adjustments and one-time supplements granted by the North Carolina General Assembly