The retirement age most Americans are aiming for and the age at which most Americans actually stop working are not the same number. According to the 2026 Retirement Confidence Survey from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), 56% of workers say they plan to retire at 65 or older. Gallup’s April 2026 survey puts the actual average retirement age for U.S. retirees at 61 to 62, a gap that has held steady for roughly two decades.
The distance between those two numbers reflects a persistent pattern in which workers underwrite their retirement math on the assumption of a few extra earning years that a large share never get.
What the Data Actually Shows
Allianz Life’s 2026 Annual Retirement Study, released on May 19, 2026, found that 53% of retirees left the workforce about when they expected, while 42% retired earlier than planned. Only 5% retired later than expected. Gallup’s figure is higher, with about 46% of retirees reporting they exited earlier than they had planned.
The reasons for an early exit diverge from what workers anticipate. Allianz found the most common causes were health issues that prevented work (30%), unexpected job loss (21%), and being financially ready earlier than expected (21%). Workers still on the job, by contrast, imagined the most likely reasons for early retirement would be wanting to spend more time with family (36%), being financially ready earlier (32%), or reducing stress (31%). The planning assumption is a lifestyle choice. The lived experience is more often a health event or a layoff.
Why Working Longer Is a Fragile Plan
Allianz reports that 80% of Americans believe working longer and retiring later would help fund the lifestyle they want, while 59% worry they will not be able to retire on their own terms. Those two figures really capture the central tension. Working longer is the most common backup plan, and it is also the one most likely to be derailed by circumstances outside the worker’s control. The labor market in mid-2026 does not make that plan any easier to execute.
The unemployment rate sat at 4.2% in June 2026, up from 3.7% in January 2024. Job openings recovered to 7.59 million in May 2026 after dipping to 6.55 million in December 2025, though the market remains looser than it was during the post-pandemic peak. For a 60-year-old who gets laid off, the raw number of openings matters less than whether employers will actually hire someone within a few years of retirement age.
The Financial Pressure Building Underneath
The macro picture makes it harder for workers to build the extra cushion they had planned to accumulate in their final earning years. The personal savings rate has fallen from 6.2% in the first quarter of 2024 to 2.8% in the second quarter of 2026. Americans spend 93.4% of their disposable income on consumption, leaving little room for retirement contributions late in their careers.
Real average hourly earnings, which strip out inflation, sat at $11.32 in June 2026, compared with $11.13 in January 2024. Purchasing power has been essentially flat over 30 months. Inflation pressure remains elevated, with the Core PCE index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, sitting in the 90.9th percentile relative to historical norms.
Consumer sentiment measured 49.5 in June 2026, in the bottom 10% of readings on record. Credit card delinquencies stood at 2.92% in the first quarter of 2026, within the normalizing range but well above the pandemic low near 1.5%.
Confidence Is Softening in Both Directions
EBRI’s 2026 survey found workers’ confidence in having enough money to live comfortably in retirement fell 6 percentage points from 2025 to 61%, while retirees’ confidence fell 5 points to 73%. Sixty-five percent of workers said debt is a problem for their household, and nearly one in three carry more than $25,000 in non-mortgage debt. The 2026 Social Security cost-of-living adjustment came in at 2.8%, a smaller cushion against ongoing price pressure.
What the Numbers Add Up To
That three-year gap between planned and actual retirement ages is not a bug in the system. It is a structural feature of how U.S. retirement actually works. A financial plan built around retiring at 65 assumes the worker gets to make that choice freely. The data tells a different story, with roughly four in ten workers not getting that choice at all. Health issues, layoffs, and caregiving demands intervene, and the target retirement age ends up functioning more as a ceiling than a real plan. For workers still in their fifties and early sixties, the practical takeaway is that the plan needs to hold up under an earlier-than-intended exit, because for a significant share of Americans, that is exactly what unfolds.
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