(Ricky Carioti/ The Washington Post ) - Sandra Conchar, 27, a community relations manager at Potomac Pizza, tosses dough past second graders Allison Brinkman, left, and Bryn McMakin, center, during a pizza making demonstration at Wood Acres Elementary School on October 23, 2012 in Bethesda, Md.
Late starts
Young workers “are starting later and more precariously than before,” said John Schmitt, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Imagine you are postponing your career three or four or five years, then afterward you spend 10 years drifting in and out of low-paying jobs without benefits. It could be that you are, relative to someone a generation older than you are, 10 or 15 years late pulling yourself together for retirement.”
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Financial planners have long compared retirement security to a three-legged stool supported by Social Security, personal savings and employee pensions. But that stool, never sturdy for many Americans, has grown even more unsteady in recent years.
As employers shy away from the financial risk of funding their workers’ retirements, the share of private-sector workers with pensions that pay a guaranteed benefit has been in sharp decline.
Fewer than one in three workers had defined-benefit coverage in 2010, down from 44 percent in 1995 and 88 percent in 1983, according to the Center for Retirement Research.
In addition, one-fifth of the workers in private-sector pensions and 10 percent in public-sector plans have had their benefits frozen, meaning their benefits are no longer growing or their plans are no longer accepting enrollees, or both.
The changes already are hitting retirees. Just 42 percent of people 60 and older had income from a traditional pension plan in 2010, down from over half in 2003.
“We expect that number will continue to fall,” Oakley said.
With traditional pensions in decline, workers are being forced to rely more heavily on 401(k)s and similar retirement savings vehicles. But these have proved inadequate given the erratic investment market returns of the past decade and an income squeeze that has made it difficult for many workers to save.
More recently, rock-bottom interest rates have made it harder to build wealth, a reality that has put added financial pressure on employers who continue to offer traditional pensions funds. Those low rates also have forced employers who have kept their defined-
benefit pensions intact to dig deeper to fund them to comply with accounting rules.
This is all compounded by the fact that many Americans do not put aside enough money to begin with. The Federal Reserve says that in 2010 the typical household headed by people between ages 55 and 64 had just $120,000 saved in retirement accounts.
Not long ago, many Americans were able to tap their home equity or other savings to cushion their retirements. But the recession wiped away 40 percent of Americans’ wealth, severely crimping that option even as people need more money to sustain their standard of living.
The mounting challenge has left many young workers anxious about their futures and eager for some of the guarantees that were more common in years past.
The percentage of workers under 40 who said their retirement program was an important factor in accepting their jobs more than doubled between 2009 and 2011, going from 28 percent to 63 percent, according to a survey this year by Towers Watson, a human resources consultant.
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