MW 'It's not a sign that it's going well.' The median amount American workers have saved for retirement is $955.

By Jessica Hall

Are we saving enough for retirement? It depends on who you ask.

Do we have a retirement crisis?

There's a new number making the rounds that says that the median amount American workers have saved for retirement is just $955.

Yes, you read that correctly.

That figure includes people with no retirement savings at all. Using workers who had at least a positive retirement savings balance, the median savings totaled $40,000, according to the National Institute of Retirement Security.

No matter which number you use, neither is necessarily enough to fund a retirement that could last decades as people live longer. It also won't cover the estimated healthcare costs and long-term-care costs older adults are likely to incur.

"It's not a sign that it's going well," NIRS executive director Dan Doonan told MarketWatch. "At the end of the day, we are living more years in retirement, fewer retirees receive pensions and affordability is a concern."

"A retirement crisis is a conversation about affordability; 30 to 40 years ago, pensions were provided by many employers. That's changed and there's a lot more challenges - there's a lot of cross-pressures today," Doonan said, such as purchasing a home, paying for childcare, and saving for college and retirement simultaneously.

Social Security itself faces a financial crisis unless action is taken by Congress. The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund, which pays out retiree and survivor benefits, is expected to be depleted in the fourth quarter of 2032, according to Social Security's Chief Actuary Karen Glenn. At the point of insolvency, Social Security benefits would be cut by about 20%.

Not everyone agrees with the NIRS numbers.

Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute think tank, said the $955 number is off-base, in part, because it assumes that every American adult should be saving for retirement at every point in their life.

Very low-paid workers also shouldn't be saving, Biggs, author of "The Real Retirement Crisis: Why (Almost) Everything You Know About the U.S. Retirement System Is Wrong," argued, since Social Security will replace most of their pre-retirement earnings and government programs such as Medicaid or Medicare will cover their health costs in retirement.

"If you're currently on welfare, do you need to be paying into a 401(k)? Young people also shouldn't be saving; their incomes are low and they often have debts," Biggs said. "Public sector employees also shouldn't be saving in retirement accounts, since practically all of them have ... pensions. Additionally, Fed data show that a meaningful number of people save for retirement outside of formal retirement plans; think of farmers or small businessmen whose assets will generate income in retirement."

Biggs also argued that America doesn't have a retirement crisis at all.

"Whatever NIRS may say, retirement savings have never been higher. And since we indisputably DON'T have a retirement crisis today, there's very little reason to think we'll have one in the future," Biggs said in an emailed comment to MarketWatch.

There's also a range of different retirement savings numbers out there.

For example, as of late 2024, people with household income of less than $50,000 had saved a median of $2,000 in household retirement accounts, while those with household income of $50,000 to $99,000 had saved a median of $33,000, according to research by the nonprofit Transamerica Institute and the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies.

At the upper end, those with household incomes of $100,000 to $199,000 had saved a median of $147,000, and those with household incomes of more than $200,000 saved a median of $565,000, according to Transamerica.

Meanwhile, Fidelity Investments said that the average 401(k) balance was $144,400 in the third quarter, up 5% from the second quarter and up 9% from the third quarter of last year. The median 401(k) balance was $33,500.

Fidelity's numbers, of course, include just their customers with 401(k) plans - not the entirety of America.

No matter which numbers are used, there's bound to be debate, experts said.

"Whether or not we are saving 'enough' at any level of the earnings distribution is a matter of open debate in the research community," said Joanna Lahey, a professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University who has studied the relationship between age and labor market outcomes.

"People who say we are pointing out that most people seem to be living on 80% of their pre-retirement spending in retirement. They also argue that rich people are saving enough to leave money to their children while extremely poor people will be taken care of by Social Security," Lahey said. "People who say we're not saving enough point out low levels of current savings, the decline in defined-benefit pensions and people not fully adjusting for them, increased 'sandwich generation' pressures of student loans and caring for parents, decreased rates of homeownership, and so on."

So where does that leave Americans and their retirement?

Doonan said critics can argue about the methodology used behind the research and debate different sets of numbers, but in the end "I don't think there's a disagreement about which way the wind is blowing...Just saying a number's not perfect so we just ignore it doesn't make sense," Doonan said.

Instead, it's important to get the retirement discussion going.

"How do we get more people in plans and starting earlier?" Doonan said.

-Jessica Hall

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February 10, 2026 14:11 ET (19:11 GMT)

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