Younger Canadians would switch jobs for a pension as saving targets slide
Eighty-nine percent of American workers say they trust the financial advisors their employers provide, but 69 percent are unsure they can retire comfortably,.
A new US retirement report from benefits consultant NFP, an Aon company, frames the problem as engagement rather than trust.
The share of US employees off track for retirement climbed from 68 percent in 2025 to 72 percent in 2026, NFP found, even as 62 percent said one-on-one meetings with a financial professional were a helpful planning resource and 84 percent said they would consider working with an advisor if given the chance.
One-on-one guidance helps employees "navigate complex decisions" and "turn intention into action," said Jessica Espinoza, national practice leader for retirement advisory at NFP.
But "too many employees aren't taking the necessary first step," she said.
For Canadian plan sponsors, the parallel is only partial.
NFP's US findings assume near-universal access to a workplace plan, a starting point that does not hold north of the border, where just 48 percent of working Canadians report an employer-sponsored pension plan, according to an IG Wealth Management survey reported by Benefits Canada.
More than 9m Canadians have no workplace plan at all, the CD Howe Institute found, and fewer than a fifth of small and mid-sized employers sponsor one.
According to the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan’s 2026 Canadian Retirement Survey, that access gap is turning pensions into a recruitment and retention tool.
Among Canadians aged 18 to 34, 65 percent said they would consider changing jobs for a defined benefit pension or a better one, HOOPP’s survey of 2,000 Canadians found, while 69 percent of the full sample said they would accept a slightly lower salary for a job that offered a pension.
Jennifer Rook, HOOPP’s vice-president of government, regulatory and stakeholder affairs, said pensions are becoming a differentiator in the competition for talent.
Financial strain sits behind those trade-offs. In HOOPP’s 2025 survey, 55 percent of Canadians said they lived paycheque to paycheque, up from 48 percent in 2023, and 49 percent had not saved for retirement in the past year.
David Coletto, chief executive of Abacus Data, which conducts the survey, said pensions can offer more certainty at a time when Canadians feel uncertain about the future.
Some members appear to be lowering their sights.
Jimmy Carbonneau, a group retirement, insurance and annuity plans advisor at AGA Benefit Solutions, said the mean dropped 31 percent and the median 50 percent, and questioned whether members were recalibrating their expectations or giving up.
Respondents reported holding 47.4 percent of their targeted savings in registered accounts, he added, with men at 53 percent and women at 42 percent.
Carbonneau also pointed to a plan-design issue for sponsors: statements often print Canada Pension Plan estimates based on average or maximum benefits that may not match an individual member’s reality.
The cost of leaving the problem unaddressed is measurable.
Financial stress cost an estimated $69.5bn in lost productivity in 2025, up $15.6bn from 2024, according to the National Payroll Institute, and nearly one in four Canadians said personal-finance stress had hurt their performance at work.
Health-related productivity challenges affect 19 percent of working time, the equivalent of 46 lost working days per employee a year, Manulife reported in its 2026 wellness report, most of it while employees remain on the job rather than absent.
The Mental Health Commission of Canada estimates mental health problems cost Canadian employers more than $50bn a year in lost productivity, and research it cites suggests every dollar invested in evidence-based mental health programs returns between $1.50 and $4.
The demographic pressure is building.
By 2030, 23.4 percent of Canadians will be 65 or older, up from 19 percent in 2023, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada reports, and 41 percent of retirees say their standard of living is lower than they expected.
The agency, which publishes guidance for employers on running workplace financial wellness programs, offers a non-commercial route for sponsors weighing how to close the gap.
Where workers do connect with guidance, NFP argues the effect compounds.
“What we see consistently is that employees who engage with a financial professional, even once, make more confident decisions going forward,” said Stephen Jans, national practice leader for wealth management at NFP.
Awareness remains the obstacle: NFP found US employee awareness of employer-sponsored resources fell to 42 percent from 55 percent a year earlier, and the share who knew how to use them dropped to 34 percent from 44 percent.
“The path to better retirement outcomes already exists inside most organizations; it just needs a clearer on-ramp,” Espinoza said.
