Retiree confidence fell 5 points to 73%, according to the 36th annual Retirement Confidence Survey, released by the Employee Benefit Research Institute and Greenwald Research.
The readings are the lowest for both groups in close to 10 years, Plan sponsor reported.
The survey polled 2,544 Americans aged 25 and older online in January.
Two in five retirees said their overall spending in retirement had run higher than they expected, and a similar share said health care costs exceeded what they had planned for.
Debt, inflation and rising housing and health care costs are pressing workers while retirees worry about Social Security and Medicare, said Craig Copeland, EBRI’s director of wealth benefits research. Some 65% of workers described debt as a household problem, half carried credit card balances and nearly one in three owed more than $25,000 outside a mortgage.
Seven in 10 workers and half of retirees said they worried rising housing costs would affect their retirement.
Three in five workers said those costs were already cutting into what they could save, and nearly 60% said health care expenses were hurting their ability to put money aside.
Workers put their median expected retirement age at 65, but retirees reported a median actual age of 62, and nearly half said they left work earlier than planned.
The most common reason was a health problem or disability, cited by 41% and up 10 percentage points from 2025, Plan sponsor reported.
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A customer buys meat at a store in Washington, Aug. 14, 2024. Photo by Reuters |
Four in five workers and seven in 10 retirees said they were concerned Washington would alter the U.S. retirement system.
Only about half of workers said they were confident Social Security and Medicare would pay benefits of equal value in the future.
The Congressional Budget Office’s February 2026 budget outlook moved the Social Security trust fund’s projected depletion date forward by a year, TheStreet reported, months after a record-length federal shutdown in late 2025.
A separate funding lapse closed most of the Department of Homeland Security for 76 days until April 30, the longest shutdown of a single federal agency in U.S. history, according to NPR.
The savings needed to retire at 65 vary by as much as $1.46 million between states, CNBC reported in January, citing an analysis by the personal finance site GOBankingRates.
A Hawaii retiree needs about $2.2 million to stop working at 65 and cover essential costs for 25 years, including housing, groceries, transportation, utilities and health care, the highest figure of any state.
Oklahoma is the lowest at $735,284 for the same expenses.
The analysis drew on Bureau of Labor Statistics data on living costs for Americans 65 and older, subtracted average Social Security payments and assumed a 4% annual withdrawal rate. It excludes travel, dining out and other discretionary spending.
Writing in The Hill on Aug. 1, opinion contributor John Mac Ghlionn said the postwar bargain of steady work, a modest house and a dignified exit at 65 has been dismantled by stagnant wages and disappearing pensions, leaving Americans “no longer imagining freedom, only endless work interrupted by their own funerals.”
Mac Ghlionn argued that today’s older workers may be the last able to keep working at this scale, because artificial intelligence is automating white-collar tasks once sold as secure.
Forbes columnist John Tamny rejected that reading on Aug. 18, writing that record numbers of Americans over 65 in the workforce reflect choice rather than need, and that seniors today are healthier and wealthier than earlier generations.
Nearly one in five Americans 65 and older were in the labor force in 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, though participation has fallen since 2019, to 23.1% from 24.7% among men and to 15.7% from 16.4% among women.
The number of older Americans working is rising mainly because that age group is growing, not because a larger share of it has stayed on the job.