🧓 Some Employees Are Never Retiring

Nobody told your workforce plan this was coming.

Author

Sophia Bennett
August 23, 2026

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Retirement used to be one of the most predictable milestones in workforce planning. A fixed point everyone could plan around.

But rising costs, thin savings, and growing uncertainty about what life after work will look like are pushing that milestone further out for a large share of the workforce. The longer people stay, the longer institutional knowledge stays with them, and the more succession timelines need to stretch to match.

Have you noticed people on your team pushing their expected retirement date back?

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COMING UP

  • 🎂 55% of workers now expect to retire at 65 or later, and 14% don't expect to fully retire at all.

  • 🧭 35% of employees say clearer priorities, not recognition, would improve their motivation the most.

  • 🤖 34% of daily AI users have redirected a coworker to ask AI first instead of answering themselves.

  • 🧩 Only 25% of leaders expect AI agents to coordinate across functions within two years, most are still layering, not redesigning.

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INSIGHT OF THE DAY

Working Longer: More insights from MyPerfectResume's retirement survey below.

🎂 55% of workers now plan to retire at 65 or later

For years, retirement planning assumed a fairly fixed exit point somewhere in the mid-60s.

That assumption is getting harder to rely on as financial pressure keeps pushing the date back for a large share of the workforce. The workers closest to that stage of their careers may be sticking around longer than any current succession plan accounts for.

The Retirement Timeline, In 4 Numbers:

  • 📈 35% of workers say their expected retirement age has moved later over just the past three years.

  • 💤 14% of workers don't expect to ever fully retire.

  • 💰 51% of workers are behind on retirement savings or haven't started saving at all.

  • 🏦 64% cite the cost of living as the biggest barrier keeping them from retiring earlier.

🧭 35% of employees rank clear priorities above recognition, and companies keep investing in the wrong one

Most employees start a new role with real energy and interest in contributing, but that motivation doesn't hold up well once onboarding ends and daily ambiguity sets in.

Companies have leaned hard into recognition programs, wellness perks, and engagement software to keep people motivated, but employees are pointing to something simpler and considerably cheaper to deliver.

4 Numbers Behind What Motivates Employees Most:

  • 🎯 77% of employees say workday distractions get in the way of meaningful work.

  • 👥 Millennials (44%) and Gen Z (42%) are far more likely than Baby Boomers (26%) to say clearer priorities would improve their motivation most.

  • 📉 Clarity of expectations has dropped nine points among U.S. employees since 2020, the largest decline of any engagement factor Gallup tracks.

  • 🗣️ Only 10% of employees say their 1:1s with their manager are always productive.

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🤖 34% of daily AI users redirect coworkers to AI before answering themselves

Asking a coworker for a quick answer used to be the default first move when something wasn't immediately clear.

AI is starting to sit in that role instead, with a meaningful share of employees pointing colleagues toward a chatbot before offering their own answer. The shift says as much about workplace norms and mentorship as it does about the tools themselves.

Why Coworkers Are Turning to AI First:

  • 🙋 23% of AI users have redirected a colleague to ask AI before answering directly, rising to 34% among daily users.

  • 🎯 50% say they do it to encourage coworkers to become more self-sufficient, the top reason cited.

  • ⏱️ 44% do it to save time and avoid interruptions.

  • 🔒 37% of regular AI users say privacy or security is their biggest hesitation about using AI at all.

🧩 Only 25% of leaders expect AI agents to coordinate across functions within two years

Most organizations rolling out AI agents are applying them on top of processes that were never built with agents in mind, rather than rebuilding those processes from scratch.

That approach is a practical way to show early returns, but it has a ceiling. Getting past it means treating agentic AI as a reason to rethink how work itself gets structured, not just another tool layered onto the old way of doing it.

From Layering to Redesign: Where Agentic AI Stands:

  • 🧱 74% of leaders expect at least half of their business processes to be redesigned or rebuilt around AI agents within four years, though only 31% expect that within two years.

  • 🧭 61% expect most of their AI agents to be largely autonomous within four years, with humans mainly in an oversight role.

  • 🔍 Only 16% of leaders say their business processes are currently prepared for agentic AI.

  • 💵 Half of leaders say their organization isn't investing enough in the workforce transformation needed to support AI agents.

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Sophia Bennett | Editor-in-Chief | HR Insights Today