Most Americans plan to work in retirement. Few do.

A new Employee Benefit Research Institute survey finds a wide gap between what Americans expect to do after retiring and what they actually do. While about three-quarters of workers plan to keep earning pay in retirement, only 31% of retirees are working—under

By the time retirement arrives, the script many Americans have written for themselves often falls apart.

A new survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute shows that roughly three-quarters of American workers plan to keep working for pay after they retire. Yet only 31% of retirees are actually working. The gap is not new. Across prior EBRI Retirement Confidence Surveys dating back to 1999. the pattern has stayed strikingly consistent: workers’ expectations hover between 70% and 80%. while the share of retirees who work has never topped 34%.

The mismatch points to a bitter reality—retirement is frequently less a gradual transition than a sudden break. Experts say many people picture easing into retirement by cutting hours. taking part-time roles. working remotely. or consulting for the company they once worked for full-time. But the end of full-time work often doesn’t happen on anyone’s ideal schedule.

“People do expect to gradually transition by reducing hours, but what ends up happening is, they end up stopping completely,” Craig Copeland, director of wealth benefits research at EBRI, said in an April interview.

For many, retirement arrives through health setbacks or corporate downsizing. And once someone is out of the workforce, coming back can be difficult—especially when the search is for a “whole new job.”

Copeland said in that same April interview that “you’re going to have to find a whole new job,” and that “it’s hard to find a whole new job when you’re older.”

That reality matters because work isn’t just a wish—it’s part of how many Americans think they will pay for retirement. In EBRI’s 2026 Retirement Confidence Survey. which drew responses from 2. 544 Americans in January. 75% of workers said they expect to leverage work as a source of income in retirement. Paid work also ranks fourth among expected income sources, behind Social Security, workplace retirement savings, and personal retirement savings.

Copeland framed it as a practical plan: workers are continuing to work “and bring in income.” But the numbers show how often that plan doesn’t translate into retirement behavior. Only 27% of current retirees report drawing income from paid work.

A key challenge, Copeland said, is that the labor market doesn’t always support the “work less” version of retirement that many people envision. Part-time opportunities—especially in professional fields—are comparatively scarce.

Beyond hours, older job seekers face another hurdle: getting hired in the first place. Maura Porcelli, senior director of workforce at the National Council on Aging, said in an April interview that “re-entering employment can be very difficult when you’re an older jobseeker.”

Other retirement surveys echo the same intention. A recent report from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies found that 48% of pre-retirement Americans plan to work in retirement. while 32% said they do not. and another 19% were unsure. Catherine Collinson. CEO of the Transamerica Center. said in an April interview that “Many workers are planning to work in retirement for financial and healthy aging-related reasons. ” adding that “life happens. ” including health problems. family responsibilities. or job loss that can push people out of the workforce abruptly.

Collinson also pointed to a quieter contradiction: the meaning of “retired” itself. If someone takes a retirement package, lives as a retiree for a year or two, then lands a full-time job in a related field, she asked whether they still count as retired.

“Semantically, when people self-identify as ‘retired,’ are they supporting a societal expectation that they are no longer working?” Collinson said.

The pressures behind the return to work have not disappeared. A February report from AARP found that 7% of American retirees had recently “unretired,” meaning they reentered the labor force. The most common reason was to make more money.

Carly Roszkowski, vice president of financial resilience programming at AARP, said in an April interview that the country is in an “economic uncertainty zeitgeist,” with people worried about outliving retirement savings and about everyday expenses such as the cost of gas and groceries.

In the best case scenario, Roszkowski said, people would work in retirement because they want to—not because they have to. She said many retirees feel they still have “a lot left to give,” and that they want to be challenged, feel purpose, and “give back.”

Still, the survey numbers show how often retirement plans collide with real-world constraints: the timing of job loss, the difficulty of finding work after leaving, and the scarcity of the part-time glide path many Americans expect.

In the end, the question is less whether older Americans value work, and more whether the economy and the hiring market will allow retirement to look the way people imagine it—because for the majority, it doesn’t.

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