Assistance program
Social Insurance for Railroad Workers
$117.8 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Railroad Retirement Board, Railroad Retirement Board
- Assistance
- Direct Payments With Unrestricted Use
- CFDA number
- 57.001
- What it does
- Provide income security for retired and disabled railroad workers, their family members, and survivors, and financial benefits for railroad workers who are unemployed or unable to work due to illness or injury. Also, administer Medicare coverage for railroad workers and their family members.
- Who benefits
- Individuals, families, pension recipients.
- Who applies
- Under the Railroad Retirement Act, for employee, spouse and survivor benefits, the employee must have had 10 or more years of railroad service or, for annuities beginning January 2002 or later, 5 years of railroad service rendered after 1995. For survivors to be eligible for benefits, the employee must also have been insured at death. Under the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act, an employee must have earned at least $4,275.00 in calendar year 2021, $4,387.50 in calendar year 2022, and $4,737.50 in calendar year 2023 (counting no more than $1,710 per month in 2021, $1,755 per month in 2022, and $1,895 per month in 2023).
- Authorized by
- Provides statutory authorization and basis for paying retirement benefits to retired railroad workers and certain family members.
- Provides authorization and basis for paying social security benefits for American workers and certain family members.
- Provides statutory authorization and basis for paying unemployment and sickness benefits to railroad workers.
- Extends statutory authorization and basis for paying additional unemployment and sickness benefits related to the coronavirus pandemic and suspended sequestration of unemployment and sickness benefits through May 9, 2023, 30 days after the Presidential declaration of an end to th…
- Provides statutory authorization and basis for paying additional unemployment and sickness benefits to railroad workers affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
- Further extends statutory authorization and basis for paying additional unemployment and sickness benefits related to the coronavirus pandemic.
- Program site
- http://www.RRB.gov ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Recipients
This program's money is paid out as non-itemized direct payments — USAspending records it under a single aggregate, so individual recipients aren't listed. The dollars and agencies above are complete; the recipient roster isn't part of the public record for programs like this.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments