Only a fifth of U.S. workers are "very confident" that they have enough money saved to enjoy a comfortable retirement.
That's an improvement over 2013, when the same survey, commissioned by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), found that only 13 percent of workers said the same.
But clearly, the survey shows that many, if not most, Americans enter retirement unsure of their financial security.
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The survey found, for instance, that 54 percent of workers estimated that the combined value of their bank accounts and portfolio was less than $25,000.
As for employees without a retirement package, such as a pension or a 401(k), two-thirds of them have less than $1,000 in savings.
"The amount of money American workers have saved is alarmingly low, and it's a disturbing trend," said Mathew Greenwald, president of Greenwald & Associates. "People do a poor job of estimating and understanding how much they need to sustain a retirement that could last a very long time."
Even retirees, 500 of whom were polled for the study, express ambivalence about being able to maintain a comfortable lifestyle for the rest of their lives. Only 39 percent said they were very confident, although that is up significantly from the 18 percent who said the same in 2013.
Employers may not be offering more generous retirement benefits in response, but they are increasingly offering employees financial advice. According to a separate SHRM survey of HR professionals last year, 53 percent of employers now offer some type of investment advice to workers, up from 42 percent in 2011.
That's probably good news, since a large percentage of employees polled (39 percent) said that their estimate of what they needed to retire comfortably was based on simply "guessing," rather than sitting down with an expert.
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