More than one million UK workers believe that they will never retire, new research from Canada Life has revealed.
Yet, despite this, the research also showed a considerable drop in the number of people thinking they will work beyond their state pension age.
Canada Life said 17.1 million working adults (44%) expect to work beyond their state pension age, down 2.7 million from 2020.
The biggest concern that UK adults have when thinking about working beyond the state pension age is being unable to enjoy their older age (34%), while a third are worried their health will deteriorate because they need to keep working and 27% said they either need to or want to work but are worried their health will make it difficult to do so.
However, nearly one in four (23%) wish to continue working because they enjoy the routine and 21% want to do so because they enjoy their job.
Of those people expecting to work beyond their state pension age, over two fifths (43%) think that their pension will not be enough to fully retire and suspect they will need to continue earning money. A quarter (22%) of respondents say they will continue working as they are unsure how long their retirement savings will last, while 10% think they are prepared but believe their current lifestyle may make it too expensive for them to retire.
Andrew Tully, technical director at Canada Life, said: “Despite over a million people thinking they will never retire, there is a considerable drop in the number of people thinking they will work beyond their state pension age. Understandably the pandemic has had a drastic impact on this, with many people re-evaluating how they want to live and what they want to do in later life.
“Digging beneath the surface, there are a variety of reasons for working beyond state pension age, or not retiring at all. For some people the social side of work would be missed, but for others, financial considerations are a key driver. As an industry, we need to find ways of encouraging better engagement in long-term financial planning as a way to ensure that people are confident that they are building sufficient savings for retirement.”
Auto-enrolment has been successful in helping workers to save, but Tully says the industry must think about how to encourage greater levels of saving, possibly through the introduction of auto-escalation during pay reviews.
