Employers say their employees are prepared for retirement, but workers aren’t so sure

However, a greater share of workers said they were more in control of their finances this year compared to 2024, PNC Bank found.

Sept. 4, 2025 - HR Dive
Ginger Christ, Editor

Dive Brief:

• More than 3 in 4 employers said they believe their workers are prepared for retirement, yet less than half of workers think so, according to PNC Bank’s third annual Financial Wellness in the Workplace Report, released Aug. 27.
• Workers had varying levels of confidence in their ability to meet their retirement goals by generations, the report found. While 56% of Generation Z employees said they are "somewhat" or "very confident," 50% of millennials and boomers and 43% of Generation X said the same.・/li>>
• Of the more than 500 U.S. employers surveyed, 78% said workers’ financial stress has a negative effect on operations, mirroring last year’s findings.

Dive Insight:

More than half of workers said their financial health negatively affects their workplace productivity, according to an August report from The Hartford.・/p>>

Meanwhile, two-thirds of workers who participated in a recent multigenerational survey published by the Transamerica Institute said they didn’t expect to have enough money saved to meet their retirement needs.

Part of preparing workers for retirement is ensuring they understand both what retirement actually looks like and the reality of their personal financial situation, an official at the National Institute on Retirement Security previously told HR Dive.

PNC found there a minor uptick in the percentage of employees who had access to a financial planning benefit. In 2025, 30% did, up from 28% the year before.・/p>>

Despite their trepidation about retirement savings, workers reported a slight improvement in the amount of stress they feel about their finances, PNC found. Sixty-eight percent of employees said they are "somewhat" or "very" stressed about their finances, compared to 70% in 2024 and 71% in 2023.・/p>>

Employers, too, said they thought workers’ financial stress levels were down. Sixty-nine percent of companies said they believed workers faced financial stress in 2025, an improvement from 78% in 2024 and 71% in 2023, the report found.・/p>p

Overall, workers said they were more in control of their finances this year (62%) compared to 2024 (56%), per PNC.