Most federal workers — 80 percent – say they are ahead of schedule in planning for retirement, and three out of four plan on working for pay in their retirement years, according to an Office of Personnel Management online survey conducted between May and September 2005 with about 7,300 employees.
The survey found that over half of workers expect to retire before they reach age 62 and that four out of 10 expect to retire at 59 or earlier.
OPM said the results would be useful in developing a retirement readiness profile that employees can use to evaluate where they stand on the retirement readiness curve — and that the profile would help managers evaluate the effectiveness of their employee education efforts to the same end.
Since the federal workforce is aging and a significant portion is gearing up to depart from government service retirement education has been pushed into the spotlight.
OPM’s numbers indicate that just over one-fourth of the federal workforce could be eligible to retire within several years.
Just over 192,000 federal employees were eligible to retire in fiscal 2004, and 303,000 were eligible for early-out retirements.
