Are you ready for pretirement?

 Are you paid by the hour? Do you believe you will be able to retire with comfort? If not, you are not alone, just over 50% of hourly employees feel they will be able to retire comfortably. A survey of 2,000 employees split evenly between salaried and hourly workers reveals that hourly workers are less confident they will retire comfortably compared to salaried workers (53% vs. 63%).

The survey conducted in 2023 on behalf of a retirement benefit provider finds that 25% of employees say their employer does not offer a retirement savings plan.

Hourly workers making less than $60,000 a year have even less access to a retirement plan than salaried workers making the same amount (28% with no access for hourly workers vs. 21% for salaried workers).

This lack of access to planning and savings programs puts workers' financial independence during retirement years in jeopardy. A big concern is that although 54 percent of hourly workers say they will be somewhat or very reliant financially on a family member, they are twice as likely to say they do not have any other family member they can rely on.

Another issue found in the survey was that the average worker is saving 70 percent of what they plan to withdraw annually every year in retirement. While the average employee has $128,815 saved for retirement, they anticipate needing to withdraw $184,850 annually upon retiring.

The good news is that nearly a third (32%) of hourly workers say their parents and grandparents did not have the same access to retirement savings plans,

There is a new emerging life stage called pretirement. This is an emerging life stage between full-time work and retirement in which hours are reduced and people consider new job roles. A majority (73%) of workers are likely to embrace “pretirement.” Of those planning to “pretire,” 39 percent expect to pivot to a new job in a different industry.