For those earning just enough to avoid living paycheck to paycheck — the families political consultants obsess over every election cycle, the people the system still kind of works for — the economic picture is bleak. Our retirement savings aren’t merely stagnating. They’re shrinking.

Over the past year, major media outlets have cycled through fresh takes on a broken retirement system. Each ran with their pet issue. The New York Times unpacked the origin of the 401(k) — a financial product never designed for workers, but the executive suite. (A tax loophole favoring the wealthy? Who knew?) Newsweek sounded the alarm about Gen X’s looming retirement cliff. Politico dinged lobbyists and bipartisan tax policy that shaped retirement tools to disproportionately benefit the ultra-rich, a tale as old as time.

But past all the column inches of thinkpieces and hours of podcast diatribes, one data point continues to resurface: Most American workers can’t even afford to contribute to their retirement.

The cost-of-living crisis has workers scrambling to cover today’s bills, with barely any room left to plan for their future selves. A 2022 AARP survey found that nearly half of private-sector employees (48%, or roughly 57 million people) don’t have access to any retirement plan through their jobs. Another study in 2023 found that four in 10 workers with 401(k)s aren’t contributing at all. And those that are, are not contributing nearly enough.

Vanguard’s 2023 data put the average employee-contribution rate at just 7.4% of income. That’s well below what’s needed for long-term stability. And that’s assuming the money stays put. It doesn’t. The Harvard Business Review identified a three-year period (2014–2016) in which 41.4% of American workers who left their jobs had cashed out their 401(k)s:

The 41.4% cash-out figure at job exit in our data also dwarfed the number cashing out during their years of employment. While employed, people had plenty of opportunities to have a cash crunch . . . Yet only 7% cashed out via hardship withdrawal and 3% via 401(k) loans that were not repaid on time.

For as long as the 401(k) has existed, there has been a narrative that places the fault on the workers. You’ve heard them all: They’re lazy, they’re financially illiterate, they don’t have the discipline to self-educate. But no amount of self-help books or weekday mornings with Squawk Box can readily prepare anyone who doesn’t have the funds to invest in markets in the first place.

Across the board, all these numbers tell a similar story. Wages are too low, and the cost of living too high, for workers to save, let alone sustain a secure retirement. Forget compounding interest or target-date funds. For millions, the “future self” is a luxury that they cannot afford to consider.

If you’re only able to put away $1,000 and the market sees a 10% bump, that’s only a gain of $100. You’d never miss it, especially when you could use that $1,000 today for rent, groceries, the electric bill, or car insurance.

It’s not that people are being impractical or willfully ignorant. Rather, the mindset actually comes from a very grounded place. The return simply hasn’t been worth the squeeze.