56% of Workers Plan to Retire at 65 or Later. The Average American Is Out at 62, and Not by Choice.
Most workers have a retirement date circled on the calendar, and most workers will miss it by years, not by choice but by circumstance. The numbers behind that gap reveal a financial blind spot that affects nearly half of all…
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Most workers picture themselves clocking out sometime in their mid-to-late 60s. The reality lands three to five years earlier, and it usually shows up uninvited. The 2026 EBRI Retirement Confidence Survey finds that workers’ median expected retirement age is still 65, while the median retiree actually stopped working at 62. Nearly half of retirees (46%) say they left the workforce earlier than they had planned.
The gap between planned and actual retirement age shows up as a consistent pattern across every major dataset, from Gallup to EBRI to the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, and it has held for two decades.
What Workers Say They Want
The Transamerica Center’s most recent workforce survey puts the planning picture in sharp relief. Just 29% of workers expect to retire before 65. Another 21% expect to retire at 65, 10% between 66 and 69, and 39% plan to work past 70 or say they do not plan to retire at all. Add those up, and a clear majority of the American workforce, more than half, is planning on 65 or later.
The reasons are practical. Medicare eligibility begins at 65. Social Security’s full retirement age is 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later. Workers who claim Social Security at 62 accept a permanent benefit reduction of roughly 30% compared with waiting until full retirement age. Every additional year on the job also means one more year of contributions and one fewer year of drawdown.
What Actually Happens
According to the TIAA Institute’s July 2026 survey, the average retiree reported retiring at age 57, with 52% saying they retired earlier than expected and only 6% later. Gallup’s 2026 reading of current retirees puts the average at 61, while EBRI’s median lands at 62. The measurements differ, but they all point in one direction: Americans exit the workforce well before the age they had circled on the calendar.
Retirement often arrives as an event rather than a planned decision. The most common triggers cited in the EBRI and TIAA data are a health problem, a layoff, or a caregiving obligation for a spouse or parent. In a July 2026 interview, TIAA Institute head Surya Kolluri added another to the list: “It could be a health incident. It could be caregiving. It could be displacement. It could be AI.”
The Economic Backdrop Is Not Helping
The labor market currently looks stable on the surface. The unemployment rate was 4.2% in June 2026, and initial jobless claims totaled 197,000 for the week ending July 25. Job openings were at 7.59 million in May, historically strong territory.
Underneath those headline numbers, workers are running thinner margins. The personal savings rate fell from 6.2% in the first quarter of 2024 to 3.9% in the first quarter of 2026. Real average hourly earnings have hovered in the $11.23 to $11.38 range over the past two and a half years, essentially flat after accounting for inflation. The 2026 Social Security cost-of-living adjustment came in at 2.8%, modest support for retirees living on fixed income.
What the Gap Costs
A worker who plans to save until 65 and then draw down for 20 years has one financial model. A worker who is pushed out at 60 has a different one: five fewer years of contributions, five extra years of retirement to fund, and a wait until 62 for Social Security and 65 for Medicare. Health insurance in that pre-Medicare window is one of the largest unplanned line items early retirees face.
Planning on a single retirement age assumes the outcome workers are least likely to get. Kolluri recommends modeling three scenarios at ages 57, 62, and 65, and saving to the earliest realistic one.
Second, workplace savings plans and catch-up contributions matter more the further behind the plan a worker is: the standard 401(k) limit for 2026 is $23,500, with an additional $7,500 catch-up available for those 50 and older. Together, they make an involuntary early exit easier to absorb, even if neither closes the gap alone.
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David Beren has been a Flywheel Publishing contributor since 2022. Writing for 24/7 Wall St. since 2023, David loves to write about topics of all shapes and sizes. As a technology expert, David focuses heavily on consumer electronics brands, automobiles, and general technology. He has previously written for LifeWire, formerly About.com. As a part-time freelance writer, David’s “day job” has been working on and leading social media for multiple Fortune 100 brands. David loves the flexibility of this field and its ability to reach customers exactly where they like to spend their time. Additionally, David previously published his own blog, TmoNews.com, which reached 3 million readers in its first year. In addition to freelance and social media work, David loves to spend time with his family and children and relive the glory days of video game consoles by playing any retro game console he can get his hands on.
