Nearly 7 in 10 Workers Doubt They Can Ever Afford to Retire

Retirement used to feel like a finish line most workers expected to reach. Not anymore. New data highlighted by HR Dive shows that 69% of employees are now unsure they can retire comfortably, meaning nearly 7 in 10 workers doubt they will ever afford to stop working. At Metaintro, we track how pay, benefits, and the wider labor market shape the choices you make about your career, and this shift matters for everyone still building a nest egg. The short answer is that flat savings are colliding with rising costs, and that squeeze is what this guide unpacks, along with the practical levers you still control.

Just How Many Workers Doubt They Can Afford to Retire?

The headline figure comes from the 2026 NFP U.S. Retirement Trend Report, produced by the Aon-owned benefits broker NFP, which surveyed 1,000 U.S. working adults involved in household financial decisions. In that group, 69% said they are unsure they can retire comfortably. That is not a fringe worry. It is the majority view among people who are actively managing their own money, which makes it a signal about the broad middle of the workforce rather than a story about one struggling corner of it.

A second national study points the same direction. The 2026 Retirement Confidence Survey from the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that workers' confidence in having enough money to live comfortably throughout retirement fell 6 percentage points to 61% in 2026, down from 67% in 2025. Even retirees, who have already crossed the line, saw confidence slip 5 percentage points to 73%, and overall confidence across Americans landed at 64%.

When two separate surveys built on different samples land on the same story, the trend is real, and it says the retirement dream is slipping for a lot of ordinary earners.

Why Are So Many Workers Falling Off Track for Retirement?

The confidence gap tracks a hard behavioral number. According to NFP, the share of employees off track for retirement climbed from 68% in 2025 to 72% in 2026. In other words, roughly three in four workers are not saving at the pace their own future will demand, and that group is growing year over year rather than shrinking. A one-year jump of that size is not a rounding error. It is momentum in the wrong direction.

Some of the slippage is happening in plain sight. A striking number of employees never even enroll in the plan sitting in front of them, a gap we broke down in why a great retirement benefit does not help if most workers never set it up. Others are dipping into the savings they do have. The rise in record 401k hardship withdrawals shows how many households are treating retirement accounts as emergency funds, which quietly resets the retirement clock every time someone pulls money out early. Each early withdrawal is a decade of future compounding erased in a single hard month.

What Is Driving the Retirement Confidence Drop?

Ask workers why, and the answer is rarely about ignoring the future. It is about the present costing too much. The EBRI survey, run with Greenwald Research, found that 65% of workers report debt as a household problem, with 25% calling it a major problem. Debt at that scale does not leave much room for a contribution that will not pay off for decades, because minimum payments and interest have first claim on every paycheck.

Healthcare is the next weight on the scale. In the same survey, 60% of workers said healthcare costs are hurting their ability to save for retirement. That pressure helps explain a separate finding surfaced by HR Dive, where 24% of employees reported job lock, staying in a role they dislike just to keep their health insurance, according to research from West Health and Gallup. When benefits chain people to jobs, career mobility and long-term wealth both take the hit, because the raise that would have funded retirement is the raise you never chase.

How Are Everyday Bills Crowding Out Retirement Savings?

Housing may be the clearest example of the crowding-out effect. The EBRI data shows that 70% of workers are concerned rising housing costs will affect their retirement, and 60% say high housing costs are already hurting their ability to save. Rent and mortgage payments arrive every month with a firm due date. A retirement contribution can be skipped without an immediate consequence. That asymmetry is exactly how good intentions lose to hard bills, month after month, until the skipped contribution becomes the default.

The NFP report puts a single number on the trade-off. It found that 46% of respondents are deprioritizing or unable to save for retirement because expenses like housing, car payments, and healthcare take precedence. This is the financial strain many households now live with, and it is why an entire generation is rethinking the old order of pay first and save for retirement later, as we covered in why Gen Z workers are choosing bigger paychecks over pension plans. When the long game feels unwinnable, people rationally optimize for the paycheck they can see.

Do Workers Trust the Help Their Employers Offer?

Here is the surprising twist. Workers are not rejecting help. The NFP study found that 89% of employees trust employer-provided financial advisors, and 84% would consider working with one if given the opportunity. The barrier is engagement, not trust. Only 42% are even aware of the services available to them, and just 34% know how to use them.

That awareness gap is a missed opportunity hiding in plain sight, and the reasons people give for staying away are fixable. Among the barriers NFP identified, 24% feel they lack enough income to invest, 20% worry about fees, and 19% are unsure how a professional could even help them. Yet when employees do sit down with an advisor, 62% say the one-on-one meetings are helpful. The lesson for job seekers and employees alike is to read the benefits package closely, because unused perks are money left on the table. We made the same case about the paid time off and benefits worth chasing when you compare offers.

Is Social Security Making the Retirement Anxiety Worse?

The safety net workers assumed would be there is now a source of worry rather than comfort. The EBRI survey found that 80% of workers are concerned about government changes to the retirement system, and only about half are confident that Social Security and Medicare will deliver benefits of equal value to today. That uncertainty pushes more of the retirement burden onto the individual worker, precisely when that worker has the least room to absorb it.

The strain shows up in emergency preparedness too. Fewer than 60% of workers now have emergency savings, down from 64% in 2025, and fewer than 70% of retirees have a cushion, down from 74% in 2025. When a household has no buffer, a single surprise expense can wipe out a year of retirement contributions, which is one reason so many older workers are returning to work after retiring for financial reasons. Retirement, for a growing number of people, is turning into a phase they cannot fully afford to enter or stay in.

How Do Younger and Older Workers Experience This Squeeze?

The retirement gap does not land evenly across a career. Younger workers are watching the traditional path lose its appeal before they ever step onto it, which is why some are front-loading time off instead of deferring every reward to a retirement they doubt will arrive, a shift we explored in why Gen Z workers are taking mini retirements. When 72% of employees are off track, the rational young worker starts to weigh present-day quality of life more heavily against a long-term payoff that feels uncertain.

Older workers face the opposite problem. They are close enough to the finish line to see exactly how short their savings fall, which is reshaping the timing of the boomer retirement wave and pushing many to keep working past the age they once targeted. The EBRI data captures this squeeze at both ends, with retiree confidence itself down 5 percentage points to 73%. The generation that was supposed to model a secure retirement is instead demonstrating how fragile it has become.

What Happens When Retirement Stops Being a Clean Finish Line?

For a growing share of people, retirement is no longer a single date but a blurry, negotiable phase. That is the picture painted by a work-after-retirement survey, where the line between working and retired keeps moving. The thin emergency cushions in the EBRI data, with fewer than 70% of retirees holding any buffer, down from 74% in 2025, explain why so many people cannot fully step away.

For job seekers, this changes how you should read a role. A position that pays well but offers no path to build savings is a short-term win and a long-term risk. The rise in workers who leave and then come back, covered in our look at retirees returning to work amid financial struggles, is a warning that the choices you make in your peak earning years echo for decades. Treating every offer as a retirement decision, not just a salary decision, is how you keep the finish line from receding out of view.

What Does the Retirement Gap Mean for Your Career?

If retirement math depends on income, then your career strategy is your retirement strategy. The uncomfortable truth buried in the pay data is how much value long-tenured employees leave behind, a pattern we detailed in the loyalty tax that costs long-tenured workers their raises. Staying put for stability can quietly cap the very earnings you need to fund retirement, so periodic market checks are not disloyal, they are prudent. The paycheck you accept today sets the ceiling on what you can save for the next thirty years.

Pay gaps compound over a lifetime, and small differences early become large ones by retirement age. Research on how outside offers raise pay more for men than for women shows that negotiation habits shape retirement outcomes long before anyone thinks about a pension. For context on the scale of top-end pay, HR Dive noted that among the 10 major restaurant chains it reviewed, Starbucks had the highest chief-executive-to-median-worker pay ratio at 1,794 to 1. The workers at the bottom of that ratio are the same ones telling surveys they cannot afford to retire, which underlines that the retirement crisis is, at heart, a pay-and-benefits story.

Is There Any Good News Buried in the Retirement Data?

The numbers are sobering, but they are not hopeless, and the same surveys that measure the anxiety also point to the exits. The most encouraging signal is that the help people need is already sitting inside most workplaces. The NFP finding that 89% of employees trust employer-provided financial advisors means the hard part, earning trust, is already done. The remaining work is logistical, not emotional.

That distinction matters because logistical problems have simple fixes. Booking a meeting, checking your contribution rate, and reading your benefits summary are all within reach in an afternoon, and the payoff is real given that 62% of workers who use one-on-one sessions call them helpful. With 84% open to working with an advisor if given the chance, the gap between doubt and action is narrower than the headline number suggests. The workers who close it are the ones who treat these small steps as urgent rather than optional.

How Can You Rebuild Retirement Confidence Starting Now?

You cannot fix inflation or housing prices on your own, but you can control three levers. First, know your number, both what you have saved and what your role should pay in today's market, because a raise routed straight into savings compounds for years rather than getting spent. Second, actually use the benefits you already have, since the NFP finding that just 34% of workers know how to use available services is a fixable problem, not a life sentence. A single meeting can turn a vague plan into a concrete contribution rate.

Third, treat mobility as a wealth tool rather than a last resort. With 72% of employees off track and only 61% of workers confident about retirement in 2026, the gap between doubt and a plan often comes down to earning more and saving the difference. The workers who close that gap tend to be the ones who benchmark their pay regularly and move when the math says to. That is a career decision as much as a financial one, and it is the part of the retirement equation you can actually change this year.

Related Articles

• A great retirement benefit does not help if most workers never set it up
• Record 401k hardship withdrawals signal deep financial strain
• The hidden retirement gap women face
• Why Gen Z workers pick bigger paychecks over pension plans
• Gen Z workers are taking mini retirements
• The boomer retirement wave and what it means for jobs
• Retirees returning to work amid financial struggles
• What a work-after-retirement survey reveals
• The loyalty tax that costs long-tenured workers raises
• Benefits worth chasing when you compare offers

People Also Asked

Q: What percentage of workers doubt they can retire comfortably?

A: Nearly 7 in 10, or 69% of employees, are unsure they can retire comfortably, according to the 2026 NFP U.S. Retirement Trend Report. A separate EBRI survey found worker confidence fell to 61% in 2026.

Q: Why are so many workers unable to save for retirement?

A: Rising costs are crowding out savings. NFP found 46% of workers are deprioritizing saving because of expenses like housing and healthcare, while EBRI found 65% report debt as a household problem.

Q: Do workers trust their employer's retirement help?

A: Yes. NFP found 89% of employees trust employer-provided financial advisors, but only 42% are aware of the services offered, so the problem is engagement rather than trust.

Wondering what you should earn to actually fund the retirement you want? Your paycheck is the foundation of every savings plan, so start by knowing your real market value. At Metaintro, we help you benchmark your pay, compare benefits, and find roles that move your number in the right direction. Sign up for Metaintro to see what your skills are worth and build a career that funds the future you want.