Summary
The RCS is the longest-running survey of its kind, measuring worker and retiree confidence about retirement, and is conducted jointly by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and Greenwald Research.
The 2026 RCS was fielded with two samples (for a total of n=2,544): a general population sample of 2,052 Americans including 1,007 workers and 1,045 retirees, plus an oversample of 492 caregiver respondents (resulting in a total of 701 caregiver workers and 305 caregiver retirees between the two samples). The survey of both samples was conducted online January 2–28, 2026. All respondents were ages 25 or older.
The general population sample was weighted by age, sex, household income, and race/ethnicity. All caregiver respondents (regardless of sample) were weighted separately by age, sex, and household income to reflect the caregiver population in the United States. Unweighted sample sizes are noted on charts to provide information for margin of error estimates. The margin of error would be ± 3.1 percentage points for workers, ± 3 retirees, ± 3.7 for caregiver workers, and ± 5.6 for caregiver retirees in a similarly sized random sample.