Financial, Retirement Stress Increasing Even as Markets Rebound, Survey Finds

"The results clearly show that retirement is not the most pressing financial concern weighing on employees' minds. In addition, the financial distractions and resulting levels of stress may cause a loss of productivity and have an impact on employee health," said Kent Allison, a partner in PwC's Financial Education Practice. "While it's important that employees put money aside for retirement, they may be hesitant to save for the future if it will exacerbate existing debt and cash flow problems in the near-term."

Despite corporate investment in programs to educate employees on retirement and investing and the implementation of auto-enrollment features in company retirement plans, employee confidence in their ability to retire "on time" remains low, with just 33% of employees surveyed confident they'll be able to retire when they want to and 46% of employees planning to retire later than they previously planned. What's more, 38% of respondents state they are saving less overall this year than last. Even more alarming, almost one third believe they'll need to use their retirement plans to pay for expenses other than retirement (education funding, home purchase, etc.).

"It's not enough to say, 'you should be saving for retirement' and auto-enroll your employees in a retirement program,’” notes Allison. “Competing financial issues could be preventing employees from saving for retirement, and it's important to understand why people aren't saving in order to address the retirement savings crisis and related workforce issues.”