According to Bloomberg News, few US workers have just entered the job market and they are already planning to exit early from it.
A survey was conducted by Goldman Sachs Asset Management in which around 25% of respondents belonging to Gen Z said that they have plans to retire early and before they attain the age of 55. This is a recent trend that is being noticed and the survey results are in line with the same in which reevaluation or just simply giving up work early is trending.
Bloomberg News also reports that most of the people that Goldman carried out a survey upon, in fact, left their jobs early. However, they took the step quite late in life, during the later stages of employment. And the most common age group range to have done so is between 60 and 64 years. And just 8% retired before they attained 55 years of age.
According to Jeri Savage, who is working for Goldman Sachs Asset Management looking after multi-asset solutions and contribution research said, “Our biggest takeaway for younger workers is that they may need to plan with more realistic assumptions”.
A broader set of workers that are young and the ones below 40 years that comprise the millennials believe that they would require a lesser amount of money every year in retirement as compared to the conventional rule of thumb that says it is 80% of the pre-retirement income level.
However, this figure is also being considered as low by some experts. One-third of the respondents that took the poll said that they might need just 60% or even lower than that.
Among the respondents, at least 89% of them said that due to financial crunches they could not save adequately for retirement. Yet, another 83% said that due to paying off prevailing loans many have not been able to contribute to the savings retirement amount. The younger generations have, however, had to take on more loans to meet their college expenses.
In the survey, few were also of the view that they might have to defer retirement by a year or so since the Covid-19 pandemic has harmed their finances. And the second most prominent reason for retiring early was simply being tired. Few of the ones that have already retired cited ill health as the most common cause of retirement.
Bloomberg News reports that as per Michael Moran, who is working as the senior retirement strategist at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, said, “We think a lot of the findings in this survey can help plan sponsors. Current workers and retirees both use employer retirement programs as their top source of information for planning for retirement”.
The research was conducted by Goldman Sachs during the period July through August 2021 and as many as 1,237 participants, divided between presently employed and already retired took the survey.
