Nearly half of retirees leave work earlier than planned — the 3 reasons Americans are retiring at 62 instead of 65
Nearly half of retirees leave work earlier than planned — the 3 reasons Americans are retiring at 62 instead of 65.
Most American workers assume they'll call it quits around 65. But most are wrong, and the gap between expectation and reality carries serious financial consequences.
According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI)'s 2026 Retirement Confidence Survey reported by USA Today, nearly half of retirees (46%) left the workforce earlier than planned. The average actual retirement age was 62, while the average age workers expect to retire remains 65 (1).
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A separate study paints an equally striking picture. The Society of Actuaries Research Institute (SARI)'s 2024 Retirement Risk Survey — which surveyed 2,012 Americans aged 45 to 80 — found that 59% of retirees left the workforce before they had expected, while only 6% retired later than planned (2).
So what's driving those early exits? Three causes dominate the data — and two of them have nothing to do with personal choice.
Health problems are the single most common cause of unplanned early retirement, and they fall hardest on lower-income workers. According to the SARI report, changes in health status were cited by 49% of retirees with incomes under $35,000 as the main reason for retiring early (2).
The EBRI survey reinforces this finding, with TheStreet noting that 41% of those who retired early did so because of a health problem or disability — 10% more than the year before (3).
That financial impact compounds quickly. Retiring at 62 instead of 65 means three fewer years of contributions, three additional years of withdrawals and — critically — three years without employer-sponsored health insurance before Medicare eligibility begins at 65 (4).
The second major cause of early retirement isn't voluntary either. Corporate restructuring, downsizing and business closures accounted for 35% of early retirements, according to EBRI. When older workers lose jobs, re-employment at comparable wages is often difficult to achieve — and many effectively retire by default rather than by design (3).
The SARI report (2) confirms job loss as a consistent factor across all income levels, impacting 18% to 20% of early retirees regardless of household income. It was circumstances like this and health-related events — entirely outside a worker's control — that drove 76% of all unplanned early retirements last year, TheStreet reported (3) based on the EBRI survey.
"Certainly, those are not people doing it because they want to," coauthor of the report Timothy Geddes, a managing director at Deloitte Consulting, told USA Today. "They're doing it because they have to (1)."
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For higher-income workers, the picture looks different. The SARI report found that among retirees with incomes over $75,000, job dissatisfaction was the leading reason for early retirement, cited by 29% of respondents — ahead of health or job loss. Achieving a savings goal earlier than expected ranked second at 24% (2).
For these workers, early retirement is a choice, and sometimes an active one.
"Some of the high-income retirees reported that they achieved their financial goals, so they stopped working," Geddes told USA Today. "And that's not in any way negative (1)."
The financial math of early retirement is unforgiving if you're unprepared. As of this year, the median retirement savings balance for a 50-year-old American is $460,363 (5). But $1 million or more is often cited as a target (6).
