Mind Over Market

More than 40 percent American workers face the prospect of having too little income in retirement and are likely to run out of money, according to a new study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). The share of the population segment at risk for an inadequate retirement ranges from 70.3 percent of households with incomes in the lowest one-third of the population to 41.6 percent in the middle income group to 23.3 percent for the highest income group. Surprisingly, given the difficulties from the financial crisis and the recession, the results find workers better prepared for retirement than a similar study conducted seven years ago. In 2003, by comparison, 79.5 percent of households in the lowest one-third of income were at risk, falling to 47.3 percent for the middle income households and 39.6 percent of the highest income group. Defying the expected pattern, older worker are less prepared than some younger workers. For example, 47.2 percent of Early Baby Boomers may not ha...

The annual Retirement Confidence Survey released today finds that while the state of American confidence about retirement is stabilizing, more ground has been lost in prepration for retirement since the survey from 2009. The survey is jointly sponsored by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and Mathew Greenwald and Associates, a market research firm. An EBRI Issue Brief contains lots of details on the findings of the survey. It is authored by Ruth Helman at Greenwald and Craig Copeland and Jack VanDerhei at EBRI and can be dowloaded as a pdf at this link: http://www.ebri.org/pdf/briefspdf/EBRI_IB_03-2010_No340_RCS.pdf Below are the highlights from a press release: The Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS) also finds that a growing number of American workers are also planning to delay retirement—which has negative implications for the U.S. job market, where unemployment is high and layoffs continue to grow. As older workers stay at their jobs longer, the RCS results suggest that...