Almost half of people who retired in 2025, 46%, did so earlier than they had planned, a reminder that the tidy “just work a few more years” retirement script often collides with real life.
CNBC’s coverage of the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s annual Retirement Confidence Survey points to a stubborn pattern: early retirement isn’t rare, and it often isn’t voluntary. EBRI released the survey on April 21 after polling 2,544 Americans age 25 and older in January.
That matters because many households plan retirement around a simple assumption: steady work until a chosen date, then a smooth transition. EBRI’s numbers suggest that assumption fails for a large share of retirees, and the fallout can be immediate and lasting.
EBRI found that factors “beyond an individual’s control” drove 76% of early retirements in 2025. The survey’s reasons include health conditions, layoffs, caregiving, health problems, disabilities, and company changes such as downsizing, closure, or reorganization.
For the people living it, “work longer” isn’t advice. It’s a plan that depends on staying healthy, staying employed, and keeping a family situation stable, all at the same time.
EBRI’s data show this gap has lasted for decades: roughly 40% to 50% of people who retired in any given year since the late 1990s said they retired earlier than anticipated. In other words, 2025 looks less like an outlier and more like a continuation.
Gallup’s polling tells a similar “expectations vs. reality” story. In 2022, the average person said they expected to retire at age 66, while the average person actually retired at age 61, the poll found.
That gap is the kind of thing policymakers and corporate leaders like to wave away with cheerful slogans about “longer working lives” and “flexibility.” But for the worker who gets pushed out, the gap is measured in years of missing paychecks and earlier draws on retirement savings.
The workforce risk isn’t theoretical, either. A 2018 Urban Institute paper found that more than half, 56%, of full-time workers in their early 50s get pushed out of their jobs due to circumstances like a layoff before they’re ready to retire. The researchers analyzed data from 1998 to 2014.
If you want a blunt takeaway: counting on uninterrupted employment in your 50s and 60s is a bet. And too many Americans are forced to lose it.
Craig Copeland, director of wealth benefits research at EBRI, warned that retiring earlier than planned can turn what looked like a stable retirement into a scramble.
Copeland wrote in an email that:
"People retiring earlier than planned can end up with a much worse retirement than expected and may need to rely on others, make significant lifestyle changes, and if they have a spouse, can change the spouse's retirement plans,"
That’s the part too many glossy retirement narratives skip: retirement isn’t just a number on a spreadsheet. It’s a set of obligations and dependencies inside a family. When one person gets forced out early, a spouse’s “plan” can turn into an emergency patch job.
Copeland also emphasized how quickly the timing shock hits.
He wrote:
"This can lead to workers being unprepared, as they thought they would be working 5 or maybe 10 years more but end up out of work with the need for retirement benefits sooner than expected,"
For readers trying to make sense of the broader anxiety around retirement planning, it’s worth keeping an eye on confidence trends too, including our recent coverage of why retirement confidence is dropping as Social Security worries grow.
When a retirement plan breaks, the obvious idea is to replace the missing income with new work. Copeland stressed how often that’s not realistic after a health event or a late-career job loss.
He wrote:
"This changes the retirement equation substantially and leaves people with limited choices as it is hard to go back to work after a health event or to find a completely new job as an older individual."
That’s a sobering counterpoint to the casual way elites talk about “working longer” as a one-size-fits-all fix. The worker who loses a job at 61 doesn’t always have an easy on-ramp to a new career. The caregiver who steps out of the workforce may not have a clean way back in.
And if someone does manage to get rehired, there’s still the time problem: every year out of work is a year not saving, not contributing, and potentially drawing down assets sooner.
In retirement writing, there’s also a parallel trap on the other side: people who do have money sometimes wait too long to use it. We’ve addressed that risk for savers as well, including the argument that waiting too long to spend retirement savings can create its own hazards.
Copeland’s bottom line wasn’t to throw up your hands. It was to plan like a grown-up: assume the future won’t be perfectly cooperative. He urged people to have “a backup plan or a range of possibilities for what can result” when they map out retirement.
That mindset fits the world we actually live in, one where a layoff, a downsizing, a closure, or a family health crisis can arrive without asking permission. EBRI’s data say those uncontrollable events dominate the early-retirement picture in 2025.
Kamila Elliott, a certified financial planner and CEO of Collective Wealth Partners in Atlanta, pointed to a “bridge strategy” for someone forced to retire early, a way to cover expenses while delaying Social Security. Elliott said the “best case” is to wait until age 70, which maximizes Social Security income, and that a minimum is to wait until full retirement age.
Full retirement age is “typically age 66 to 67, depending on year of birth,” the report noted.
And there are also straightforward steps for households still in the “near-retiree” zone: Elliott said they can reduce debt, increase retirement savings, and obtain necessary insurance. None of that is flashy. That’s the point.
Americans also have a clearer runway for catch-up saving. The report noted that in 2026, people age 50 and older can contribute an additional $8,000 to their 401(k) and an extra $1,100 to their individual retirement account, while savers age 60 to 63 can save an additional $11,250 in 401(k) catch-up contributions.
Planning for retirement is more than investing, too. If you’re nearing that transition, it’s also worth thinking through the legal and family side of the house, including why Gen X’s estate-planning unpreparedness can turn a stressful season into a mess.
The comfortable message from institutions is that retirement is a personal-choice timeline: pick a date, work until then, and everything will click into place. EBRI’s survey results tell a different truth, one that lines up with how working people already experience the economy.
Many Americans don’t “choose” early retirement. Health, caregiving demands, and workplace upheaval choose it for them. And when that happens, it can “substantially” change the entire equation, in Copeland’s words.
That reality should change how households plan. It should also change how public leaders talk: less moralizing, less finger-wagging about “working longer,” and more honesty about risk, stability, and what happens when late-career workers get shoved to the margins.
On the practical side, retirees also need to keep their finances clean once they stop working. We’ve laid out some of those basics, including IRS audit red flags retirees should know, because a surprise tax problem is the last thing a forced early retiree needs.
If the modern economy keeps producing early retirements “consistently,” as Copeland put it, then retirement planning has to stop pretending everyone gets a smooth glide path. Adults plan for storms, not just sunshine.
“Work longer” is fine as an option. It’s reckless as a guarantee.