Retirement applicants in New Jersey rose 60% in 2010 from 2009. Applications to retire in the first seven months of this year fell 16% and may "spike" again if lawmakers pass a measure to increase employee contributions to health insurance, said Andrew Pratt, a state Treasury Department spokesman. Christie has proposed workers pay 30% of their health care.

In Wisconsin, retirement applications jumped 79% in the three months that ended in March from the period last year, according to the pension system. Governor Scott Walker has signed a law limiting unions' collective-bargaining rights, requiring workers to contribute 5.8% of salaries to pensions and pay 12.6% of health-insurance costs. The law faces a court challenge.

Ohio saw a 27% annual rise in retirement filings and inquiries in March, Julie Graham-Price, a pension-system spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. Legislators last month passed a law limiting union bargaining rights, restricting local- government pension contributions and requiring workers to pay at least 15% of their health-care costs.

'Dramatic Reductions'

Mona Hauenstein, a 30-year state employee, quit in 2009 as a secretary at the Emergency Management Agency after hearing about a proposal to reduce employer pension contributions, which would have likely led to "dramatic benefit reductions," according to the pension system's annual report.

"I was going to be a big loser if I didn't, I felt, because of the reforms that were going to come," Hauenstein, 50, said in a telephone interview from Lima, Ohio.

California teacher retirements rose 20% in fiscal 2010 from a year earlier to 15,621, Patrick Hill, a spokesman for the California State Teachers' Retirement System, said in an e-mail. Other state and local retirements jumped almost 23% to 30,119 in 2010, according to the California Public Employees' Retirement System.

$15 Billion Gap

The number is likely to grow again this year as lawmakers consider pay and benefit reductions, said Brad W. Pacheco, a Calpers spokesman, to cope with a projected $15 billion 2012 budget gap.

"We expect to see an increase in retirements because of pension reforms," he said in a telephone interview, "and the continued threat of furloughs and pay cuts."

Mike Dennis, 61, who teaches in Willows, 140 miles north of San Francisco, will retire in June from what he said was "the greatest calling I ever had." Growing class sizes, cuts to student programs and "combative" salary and benefits negotiations are reasons, he said in a telephone interview.