Public Pension Retirement Decisions by System

Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: Whether your public pension keeps pace with inflation is not a detail — it is the single biggest difference between these systems, and it is decided before you retire. Some grant a cost-of-living adjustment automatically. Others grant one only if the legislature votes for it, which means some years there is none at all.

The twelve systems, side by side

The distinction that matters most

8 of these systems grant a COLA automatically to every retiree. 3 do not, and Washington DRS is split — automatic in Plans 2 and 3, but PERS 1 and TRS 1 retirees have one only if they elected it when they retired. Pennsylvania’s PSERS and Texas TRS are ad hoc — a cost-of-living increase happens only when the legislature passes one. TRS Georgia’s is conditional. If you are in one of those, a retirement plan that assumes annual inflation adjustments is assuming something nobody has promised you.

And among the automatic ones, compounding is a second, quieter divide. CalPERS and NYSTRS compound; CalSTRS, NYSLRS and OPERS do not. Over a thirty-year retirement that difference is large, and it is invisible in the first year.

Vesting is the other number to know early

Vesting decides whether you leave with a pension or with your own contributions back. It runs from 5 years in several systems to 8 years in Florida’s FRS. Several systems vary it by tier or hire date, which is why those rows say to check the page rather than carrying a single number that would be wrong for many readers.

What each page covers

Every system page works through the same four decisions: the COLA and whether it compounds, vesting, service credit purchase (buyback), and what happens if you take a refund instead of leaving the money in. The refund question is the one people get wrong most often, because taking contributions back usually forfeits the employer share and the service credit with it.

Honest gaps

Several COLA entries read unstated or unconfirmed. That is deliberate: the system publishes that a COLA exists without publishing a current rate we could verify, and we would rather say so than print a number from a secondary source. Each page states what was and was not verified for that system. None of this is advice about your own election — tier rules, hire dates and reciprocity between systems change the answer, and your own member statement governs.

If you teach

Two questions sit outside every system page above, because they are about Social Security rather than your pension. Whether your teaching position is covered by Social Security at all is decided position by position, not by state — the state list everyone publishes is not an SSA artifact. And once WEP and GPO were repealed, coordinating a system annuity with a Social Security benefit became a live decision rather than a closed one.

General information drawn from the Social Security Act, title 20 of the Code of Federal Regulations and SSA’s own published guidance, not legal advice. Entitlement turns on facts this page cannot see, and the figures change — the notice or award letter in your hand governs.