You Won’t Retire When You Expect

Most people expect either to retire early or not at all, it seems. Since the crisis of 2008, more people have said they’ll delay retirement or not retire. But the fact is most people don’t retire when they planned. Illness, injury, family situations, and lay offs cause many people to leave work never to return. There’s a lot of talk now about people in their 50s and older who were laid if in 2008 and haven’t been able to find new jobs. There’s nothing new about people retiring at a time other than when they expected. Surveys of retirees consistently show that about half retired at a time not of their own choosing or not on their initial schedule.

These latest survey from Gallup updates these facts. It shows that a high percentage of people retired earlier than they expected. It also shows that the average retirement age bottomed in 2010 and has been climbing since. I expect that to continue. After decades of people retiring earlier and earlier, many more now will hang on to jobs for as long as they can. (Keep in mind that the Gallup survey data doesn’t match up exactly with Census and Department of Labor data.)

Meanwhile, the average age at which non-retired Americans expect to retire has also increased over time, from 60 in 1995 to 66 this year. Furthermore, in 1995, more non-retired Americans expected to retire younger — 15% expected to retire before age 55, compared with 4% in 2014.

The age at which Americans expect to retire has been consistently higher than the average age at which they actually retire since Gallup began tracking both. This likely reflects changes in Social Security eligibility as well as the more challenging economic circumstances working Americans currently face. Today’s workers are also less likely to have an employer-sponsored pension, and they may still be recovering financially from the Great Recession.