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Goldman Sachs survey finds share of Americans raising their savings fell to 39% from 55%
Goldman Sachs says 39% of Americans in its retirement survey raised their savings into 2026, down from 55% a year earlier. Confidence fell by less, to 58% on track from 68%, so saving behaviour is weakening faster than sentiment.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Sixty-one percent of employees surveyed do additional work outside their main job, rising to 80% of Gen Z and 77% of millennials.
- Among younger workers, 76% of Gen Z and 73% of millennials said they could not make ends meet without that extra income.
- Money worries reach the job itself, with 69% of Gen Z and 67% of millennials saying debt or household costs make it hard to focus at work.
- Some 44% of retirees in the survey said they stopped working earlier than they had planned.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- cost Second incomes are covering current bills, so young workers are adding hours without adding to retirement balances, and the cost of catching up moves into later decades.
- constraint Deferring emergency savings and debt paydown, the items Ceder put at the top of the list, leaves households with thinner buffers against a job loss or a further rise in prices.
- exposure Anyone planning around a fixed stop date faces fewer contribution years and more years of withdrawals if the exit comes early, as it did for a large minority of Goldman's retirees.
In Goldman's data, the fall in saving behaviour is 16 points [1] against 10 for retirement confidence [2]. In relative terms the share raising savings shrank by about 29% [3] and the on-track share by about 15% [4]. The cash measure fell almost twice as fast as the feelings measure [5], and Goldman also found more respondents cutting their savings outright [2].
The extra work is where new saving would have had to come from. Fortune counts Gen Z as aged 14 to 29 and millennials as 30 to 45 [14]. Taken as a share of those doing additional work, Goldman's dependence figures mean about 61% of all Gen Z respondents [6] and about 56% of millennials [7] need a second income just to cover costs.
Goldman's own strategist describes what is being given up. Chris Ceder, senior retirement strategist at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, told a media roundtable: "Savings momentum seems to be stalling." [5] On what is being put off, he said: "So, emergency savings, lowering debt, retirement savings are really at the top." [6]
Fortune called the retiree findings "light at the end of the tunnel" [12]. Among retirees who stopped early, 26% left four to five years ahead of plan and 14% left six to ten years ahead [11]. Combined, about 40% of early retirees [8], or roughly 18% of all retirees [9], stopped at least four years before they expected. The survey as Fortune reports it does not say whether those exits were chosen.
If inflation, which Fortune puts at 3.4% [7], eases, next year's savings share could recover and 2026 would look like a one-year price shock. If side work stays common and the income keeps going to bills, the stall continues. Pay is the remaining route. Some 34% of respondents named earning more as a primary reason to move jobs [8], and recruitment platform Monster found 65% of prospective job movers changing their search priorities because of gas prices [9].
I think the savings figure is a better guide to readiness than the on-track share, because it counts cash. The view is wrong if next year's survey shows the share raising savings back above 50% with Gen Z side work still at this year's level. That would mean second incomes had started reaching savings.
What to watch
- Goldman's savings figures by income band: Fortune says readiness fell across incomes, and a drop among higher earners too would be harder to blame on prices alone.
- Any Goldman data on why early retirees stopped work, since layoffs or ill health would turn Fortune's good-news reading of the 44% into a cost.
- Monster's next survey of job-seekers: a rise from the 17% now focusing harder on salary would suggest workers are turning to pay rises to cover costs that second jobs now carry.