Joel has finally landed his first graduate engineering job after several years of lower‑paid roles. He’s in his early 20s, lives with his parents and works in London. But instead of splashing the extra cash, or saving for holidays or a house deposit, he’s decided to squirrel more of it away into his workplace pension. The reason? He doesn’t think he’ll get any kind of state pension.
“I don’t believe that I’ll be a recipient of a state pension. I know a lot of people my age don’t think they’re going to be… There just won’t be enough money,” he says. Joel is far from alone. Around half of Gen Z – those born from 1997 to 2012 – say they don’t expect the state pension to exist by the time they retire, according to a BBC Your Voice survey.
“Half of Gen Z don't expect the state pension to exist by retirement, prompting many to save more now.”
Growing up with constant headlines about an ageing population, a proportionally smaller working-age population, and the pressure on government finances, Joel thinks it’s his generation that will suffer. “It just mathematically doesn’t make sense… There has to get to a point where that state pension is taking up too much of the budget and can’t exist in the way that it exists right now.”
The state pension age is already shifting. At the start of April, the age at which you receive it began to gradually creep up, rising from 66 to 67 years by March 2028. It is due to go up again in 20 years’ time to 68, though that might happen earlier because the government has an ongoing independent review. That’s a frustration for 27-year-old retail manager Connor, who got in touch via BBC Your Voice because, he says, “the goalpost keeps moving”. “At the minute I’ll be 68 by the time I can retire, but I do think I’ll be probably closer to 75, if I’m honest.”
More than 13 million people – 19% of the population – are currently of state pension age. By 2050, even with the state pension age rising to 68, that group is projected to exceed 15 million people, nearly a quarter of the population, with numbers projected to climb towards 17 million by the 2070s. In other words, there will be lots more people qualifying for the state pension, and fewer working people, as a proportion, paying taxes into the pot to cover the bill.
At the same time, almost half of working‑age adults are not paying into a private pension pot. That means many will be relying solely on the state pension for their retirement income – and with relative poverty rates among pensioners now at 14%, the strain is already visible.