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The first challenge in retirement security isn’t investment performance. It’s participation
Many retirement frameworks were designed around a workforce that spent decades in full-time employment with a single employer. Today’s labor market looks very different. Workers move between employers more frequently, participate in the gig economy, work part-time, take career breaks, and often piece together income from multiple sources.
154 million people worldwide work in the gig economy today, and broader estimates put the figure as high as 435 million workers, or 12.5% of the global workforce.
These shifts have created gaps in retirement coverage that traditional systems weren’t designed to address. The challenge is significant. In the US alone, more than 56 million private-sector workers lack access to a workplace retirement plan, while informal employment accounts for an estimated 55% of workers in Latin America.
Around the world, policymakers are responding by expanding eligibility, broadening access to workplace savings programs and making retirement savings more portable across careers. Those efforts are already gaining traction. State Auto-IRA programs in the US have helped create more than 1.19 million funded accounts and accumulate nearly $2.9 billion in retirement assets for workers who previously lacked workplace savings options.
The objective is not just to increase participation rates. It’s to ensure workers can continue building retirement assets regardless of how, where, or how often they work.
The trend signals a fundamental shift in retirement thinking. Access is no longer being defined by employment status. Increasingly, it’s more about an individual's need to prepare for retirement.
The Global Retirement Index (GRI) is a multi-dimensional index developed by Natixis Investment Managers and CoreData Research to examine the factors driving retirement security and to provide a comparison tool for best practices in retirement policy.
The index includes International Monetary Fund (IMF) advanced economies, members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). The researchers calculated a mean score in each category and combined the category scores for a final overall ranking of the 44 nations studied.
The views and opinions expressed may change based on market and other conditions. This material is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. There can be no assurance that developments will transpire as forecasted.
Actual results may vary.
All investing involves risk, including the risk of loss. No investment strategy or risk management technique can guarantee return or eliminate risk in all market environments. Investment risk exists with equity, fixed income, and alternative investments. There is no assurance that any investment will meet its performance objectives or that losses will be avoided.