Retirees will try and stay in the workforce longer since their ability to retire with enough money to live comfortably has diminished.

In a sign of just how bleak the retirement landscape has become, the survey of 1,257 Americans found that the percentage of workers who say they are very confident about having enough money to retire comfortably has dropped to 13% this year. That's down from 18% in 2008 and from an all-time high of 27% in 2007. And it marks a record low for the 19-year survey, which the Washington, D.C., nonpartisan and nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute conducts with Washington public opinion and market research company Mathew Greenwald & Associates Inc.... Retirees, Mr. VanDerhei [a survey co-author and research director at EBRI] says, are slowly waking up to what amounts to "a huge gap between what people think it's going to take to retire comfortably and what it actually takes." With 49% of people 55 and older having saved less than $50,000, many people will be forced to settle for a "much lower standard of living in retirement than what they had hoped for," he says.... For example, some 25% of workers say they plan to postpone retirement. (The age at which workers say they plan to retire has crept up from a median of 62 in 1991 to 65 since 2004.) However, the survey notes that almost half of current retirees say they left the work force sooner than expected, frequently due to health problems, downsizings or obsolete skills. Moreover, while the survey has consistently found that about two-thirds of workers plan to work after retiring, fewer than 35% of current retirees say they have actually held down jobs at some point during retirement.

APRIL 14, 2009, Retirement Outlook Drops to Record Low, by Anne Tergesen, The Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com . [posted 4/17/2009]