Pension Age’s Paige Perrin runs on some research from Hargreaves Lansdown (HL).

Public sector households (58 per cent) are more likely than private sector households (42 per cent) to be on track for an adequate retirement income, research from Hargreaves Lansdown has found, warning that “there’s still a long way to go” to close this gap.

This is youth speak and why I like it that Pension Age lets people like Paige the chance to report from a different perspective than mine. HL and Paige are right in calling the gap between households in retirement, there are all kinds of pension gaps , most importantly whether pay was deferred to pay a wage in retirement (as it almost always was in public sector schemes) or paid up front (as it was in many jobs which didn’t “have a pension”).

The answer is actually from the DWP (clipped from a recent presentation by the Pensions Minister)

Numbers participating – not what people get by participating

If you got a lot more in your pay packet you could (in theory) save more. If you got crap pay and no pension you had only the state pension at retirement as you couldn’t save, couldn’t get paid with a pension and what was the other “triple whammy” , you didn’t get much of a state pension.

This argument gets much expanded by the Pension Minister in his recent speech at the Social Market Foundation

https://t.co/gkFY3GX4xi

— Henry Tapper (@henryhtapper) September 30, 2025

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In as much as most people in private sector are getting some kind of auto-enrolled savings pot (to be a pension by default) and the state is providing a much better state pension (if I am simple about the triple lock), then we can say there’s less extreme poverty (oops and throw in pension credit to back that statement up).

Young people, things are a bit fairer for the “have nots” than they were (although there’s a lot of people who would have expected a lot from private sector DB pensions, who won’t get much if anything from them now.

Hargreaves Lansdown head of workplace saving analysis, Clare Stinton, explained that this gap comes largely from the prevalence of final salary pension schemes in the public sector, which she said can “play an enormous role” in helping people to build a resilient retirement income.

Let’s remember that we have also moved to career average from final salary pensions in the public sector, that’s also making things a little less extreme and making public sector pensions a little “fairer”.

However, Stinton said that while such schemes still exist in parts of the private sector, they have become “vanishingly rare” in recent years.

Although auto-enrolment has brought more people into pensions, Stinton argued that it is clear “more needs to be done to boost contribution rates”.

This is of course the mantra of DC pension providers (and HL)

But rather than a rise in minimum contribution rates across the board, she suggested that “we could, for instance, see more targeted measures – for instance, encouraging employers to increase their own contributions for those employees able to boost theirs”.

“We may also see more employers look to boost their employee benefits packages with wider savings products,” she said.

In addition to this, she said that small steps, such as nudging up pension contributions, maximising what’s on offer from an employer, or delaying retirement, can also “shift the dial significantly”.

This is all good stuff and the way forward. If we don’t get mandatory contributions (like in Australia) we can get a recognition that more of pay needs to be paid later in life to make it more even. That’s the way I have explained it to junior Tappers. Juniors get it but don’t see much evidence of them getting a pension promise from the money deducted from their salaries from 22 onwards. That’s why a lot of youngsters (like junior Tappers) go for more flexible savings, why an inflexible pot when you can have a flexible one? Paige quotes Clare Stinton.

She also emphasised the importance of looking beyond pensions when assessing retirement resilience and instead considering people’s wealth in its entirety, noting that when wider assets such as savings and investments are considered, people’s resilience “rockets”.

Adequacy in retirement also improved among private sector workers when broader savings are considered: with employees in large companies seeing a rise from 41 per cent to 51 per cent, while those in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) saw an increase from 42 per cent to 51 per cent (excluding emergency cash).

This was also true for the self-employed, as Hargreaves Lansdown found that while self-employed workers “continue to struggle”, with 36 per cent on track with their retirement saving, nearly half (47 per cent) are on track when taking wider assets into account.

“Irregular income can drive this group to prioritise flexibility over traditional pension contributions, leading many to invest outside of pensions altogether,” she said, pointing out that many self-employed workers are also “locked out” of auto-enrolment.

What HL are finding is that the public sector worker is just getting it done for them.

Public sector workers still “lead the pack”, with nearly two-thirds (65 per cent) on track for an adequate retirement once non-pension wealth is considered.

At this point I realise that Paige is actually talking to a generation (junior Tappers) who have often given up on pensions because payroll deductions aren’t buying lifetime pay but an inflexible pot and Clare Stinton seems to be in that pot too!

Given this, Stinton argued that the lifetime individual savings account (LISA) could be of “huge benefit” for self-employed workers, particularly for basic rate taxpayers.

However, Stinton called for reforms to make LISAs “even more effective” by expanding the age eligibility beyond 40 and reducing the exit penalty to 20 per cent, suggesting that these changes would “better reflect the realities of self-employed work patterns and support greater long-term financial security”.

I think that we have lost an argument on pensions with the likes of Clare and Paige and it’s because we’ve made saving for them part of the wealth game. So they now see LISAs doing the jobs of pensions (my son does).

We don’t need employers , we don’t need employment , we don’t need pensions we just need savings. If we want all those pension things we should be in the public sector. Well that’s what the young entrepreneurial kids who I spend too little time with, tell me!

Clare Stinton of Hargreaves Lansdown