Average retirement age of employees: 65 years and 8 months

Less than half retire before state pension age

Just under half of the employees who went into retirement in 2022, were younger than the statutory pension (AOW) entitlement age. This age stood at 66 years and 7 months that year. Until 2013, the state pension age was 65 years, after which it was gradually raised. Between 2002 and 2006, approximately 9 in 10 workers who went into retirement were under the state pension age. From 2007 onwards, an increasingly smaller proportion retired before the state pension age.

In 2020 and 2021, the AOW entitlement age was not raised. Many employees retired during these years, and also relatively many at or after the state pension age. Those years were marked by the coronavirus crisis, but it is not possible to determine the effect, if any, on retirement and the retirement age with the available data. Although more employees retired before the state pension age in 2022 than in previous years, they were on average older at the time of retirement compared to previous years. Among the total group of pensioners, the average retirement age in 2022 was therefore higher than in previous years.

Retirement age of employees above 65 years across all sectors

With 65.1 years, the average retirement age of employees was lowest in public administration last year, followed by the sectors care and education. It was highest in agriculture, forestry and fisheries (66.6 years), followed by other (business) services and trade. For the first time, the average retirement age of employees exceeded 65 years across all sectors.

The difference in average retirement age between sectors narrowed between 2006 and 2022. In 2006, the gap between the sectors with the highest and lowest retirement age stood at more than 4 years, against 2.5 years in 2012 and 1.5 years in 2022.

Over-45s now also wish to retire at over 65 years

In 2022, employees between 45 and 65 said they wanted to continue working until the age of 65.1, on average. This is the highest age since measurements started in 2014, when it was still 64.3 years. The increase in 2022 followed a slight decrease between 2020 and 2021, from 64.8 to 64.6 years. A fairly large group said they do not know until what age they want to continue working: 39 percent of 45 to 54-year-olds and 28 percent of 55 to 64-year-olds.

Most willingness to work longer with shorter working week

In 2022, the majority of employees aged 45 to 64 years indicated they would be willing to work longer under certain conditions. 45 to 54-year-olds are more open to this than 55 to 64-year-olds: 85 and 73 percent respectively would possibly want to continue working until a higher age.

By far the most cited condition to extend one’s career is the possibility to work less. This is even more true for employees aged 45 to 54 (52 percent) than for 55 to 64-year-olds (43 percent). Being able to do lighter work and the possibility of quitting becoming more financially unattractive were also mentioned relatively often.

The data in this news release on willingness and reasons to work longer come from the Netherlands Working Conditions Survey (NEA), conducted by CBS and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). As of reporting year 2022, the way data for the NEA are collected and processed differs in some respects from previous reporting years. As a result, the figures as of 2022 may not be comparable with the figures up to 2021 inclusive in all cases.