Retirement age

Ask when you are "supposed to" retire and you will get several different answers, because the United States has no official retirement age. What it has is a series of milestone ages spread across two decades, each attached to a different program or tax rule. You can stop working at any age. The question that actually matters is when the money and the health coverage line up.

Three ages do most of the work in retirement planning: 62, the earliest you can claim Social Security retirement benefits; 65, when Medicare begins; and your full retirement age, which is 67 for everyone born in 1960 or later. Most of the other milestones are tax rules about when you can take money out of retirement accounts without a penalty, or when you must start taking it out.

Key ages at a glance#

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Social Security full retirement age#

Full retirement age (FRA) is the age at which you receive 100 percent of the Social Security benefit your earnings record has produced. Congress set it at 65 originally, then raised it in 1983 on a slow schedule that finished phasing in with people born in 1960. No further increase is scheduled in current law, though proposals to raise it come up regularly in budget debates.

Claiming before your FRA shrinks the monthly check: the reduction is five-ninths of 1 percent for each of the first 36 months early, and five-twelfths of 1 percent for each month beyond that. Someone with an FRA of 67 who claims at 62 receives 70 percent of their full benefit, permanently ². Waiting past FRA works in the other direction. Benefits grow by two-thirds of 1 percent per month, 8 percent per year, until age 70. The same person who waits until 70 receives 124 percent of the full amount ³.

The tradeoffs between claiming at 62, at FRA, or at 70 involve more than arithmetic; health, marriage, and work plans all enter into it. When to claim Social Security walks through the decision in detail, and if you plan to keep a job while collecting before FRA, the earnings test described in working while receiving Social Security can temporarily withhold part of your benefit.

Note: Medicare has its own clock. Eligibility starts at 65 no matter when you claim Social Security, and signing up late can mean lifelong premium penalties. See Medicare enrollment periods for the deadlines.

Sources for this section: [2] [3]

When Americans actually retire#

Surveys keep finding a gap between when workers plan to retire and when they do. In the Employee Benefit Research Institute's long-running Retirement Confidence Survey, workers most often say they expect to retire at 65 or later, yet the median actual retirement age reported by retirees is 62 ⁵. Nearly half of retirees say they left earlier than planned, most commonly because of a health problem, a disability, or changes at their company such as a layoff or buyout ⁵.

That gap has practical consequences. Retiring at 62 instead of 66 can mean four fewer years of saving, four more years of spending, a smaller Social Security check, and a stretch without employer health insurance before Medicare starts at 65. Planning for the possibility of an earlier-than-expected exit, rather than the hoped-for one, is a recurring theme in retirement planning.

Plenty of people move in the other direction, too. About one in five Americans age 65 and older remains in the labor force, whether for income, insurance, or the structure work provides. Working in retirement covers what that looks like in practice.

Sources for this section: [5]

Can an employer make you retire?#

Mostly, no. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act has barred mandatory retirement ages for most private-sector and government jobs since amendments in 1986, and it protects workers 40 and older from age-based firing, demotion, and hiring discrimination ⁶. A few exceptions survive: airline pilots face a federal ceiling of 65, many police and fire departments set retirement ages under a public-safety carve-out, some states impose them on judges, and companies may apply one to senior executives who meet narrow criteria.

Age discrimination that stops short of forced retirement is harder to police, and complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission remain common. Workers who suspect it can file a charge with the EEOC, which is generally required before suing ⁶.

Sources for this section: [6]

Retirement ages in other countries#

Public pension ages in most wealthy countries cluster between 62 and 67, and nearly all of them have been drifting upward as lifespans lengthen ⁷. The United Kingdom's state pension age is 66 and is rising to 67 between 2026 and 2028. France's 2023 reform is lifting its legal minimum from 62 to 64 by 2030, a change that set off months of national protests. Germany is raising its standard age to 67 by 2031, and Japan pays full public pensions at 65 while letting workers claim anywhere from 60 to 75 with adjustments. Denmark links its pension age to life expectancy by law and voted in 2025 to reach 70 by 2040, the highest scheduled age in Europe.

Comparisons are looser than they look, since countries differ in how generous benefits are and how early exits are treated. The broad pattern is the same one the US followed in 1983: pension ages rise slowly, announced decades in advance, because voters plan their lives around them.

Sources for this section: [7]

RetiredWiki. (2026, July 6). Retirement age. https://retiredwiki.com/article/retirement-age