Very few millennials, 18 percent, felt “confident” about their retirement prospects. Transamerica defines millennials as those born between 1979 and 2000.
Yet the survey uncovers some hope for millennials—72 percent of them have started saving for retirement, and they start saving at a median age of 22. The total median household savings among millennials is estimated at $31,000.
Millennials suffer from an information gap when compared to most retirement savers, with 72 percent of the millennial respondents agreeing that they don’t know as much as they should about retirement investing. One-quarter of those participating in retirement plans are not sure how they are investing their savings, and another 22 percent say that their savings are invested mostly in bonds, cash, money market funds and other stable investments.
Among the respondents, 61 percent have not fully recovered from the "Great Recession" more than six years after it ended. One-in-five of the respondents are still at their recessionary financial lows. Forty-one percent say they have somewhat recovered, 13 percent say they have not begun to recover at all and 7 percent believe they may never recover.
Just half of the respondents, 51 percent, felt like they were building a large enough retirement nest egg—and 65 percent of respondents believed they could work until age 65 and never save enough to meet their retirement needs.
Seventy-seven percent of U.S. workers believe Social Security won’t be there when they’re ready to retire.
Harris Poll conducted the study between April 11 and May 12, surveying 4,161 full-time and part-time U.S. workers.