Moderate confidence in a secure retirement has risen this year to 42 percent over 36 percent in 2015, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute in its 26th annual Retirement Confidence Survey released Tuesday.

At the same time, high confidence, which climbed steadily to 22 percent in 2015 from a historic low of 13 percent in the depths of the recession, dipped to 21 percent.

This  leveling off of renewed confidence since the loss of jobs  and assets during  the 2008 financial crisis has also shown up in the number of workers figuring they will have to delay retirement.

When the recession was at its worse, 25 percent of workers said they were planning to postpone retirement. That number has stayed steady at 13 percent for the last two years.

Active concern about retirement financial needs rose during the year.

In 2016, 49 percent of workers said they estimated how much income they will require monthly in retirement, up from 45 percent the year before.

Not surprisingly, people with savings and a carefully thought out plan for saving are overwhelmingly more upbeat about their retirement prospects than individuals and couples who have neither.

“Even if you control for discrepancies in age and income, the likelihood that a respondent is either somewhat or very confident that they will have enough money to live comfortably throughout their retirement years is 22 percentage points higher for those who have an IRA, defined contribution plan and/or defined benefit plan than their counterparts without a retirement plan,” said Jack VanDerhei, EBRI research director and co-author of the report.

For people with a retirement plan, 35 percent said they have assets of $100,000 or more (excluding primary homes and defined benefit plans) while 83 percent of people without a plan report total household savings and investments under $10,000.

In another indication of how money plays a significant role in retirement confidence, only 9 percent of people with a big debt problem said they are happy about their retirement prospects versus 32 percent of those without large debt worries expressing strong beliefs in their retirement futures.

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