Retirement age: When do you touch your pension, according to your job?

The average retirement age varies strongly depending on the professions. Does your job allow you to liquidate your pension early or, on the contrary, is it likely to make you leave later? Several factors can accentuate disparities.

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A majority of French people are still opposed to the 2023 pension reform. According to an Ifop survey for the CGT unveiled on Monday April 14, 2025, only 34% of French people believe that the legal retirement age must be maintained at 64. Nearly 6 out of 10 respondents even want a return to 62 years. Proof of this is that the legal retirement age, gradually increased from 62 to 64 years since 2023, has always crystallizes the debate. While the executive launched, on February 27, a new phase of consultation with the social partners in order to “re -work»The pension reform, the Prime Minister, François Bayrou, Discarded the hypothesis of a return to a legal age of departure at 62 years. In response, several trade union organizations have decided to withdraw from the discussions, leaving the conclave in an uncertain state.

But what about the real retirement age? In a recent publication, the Public Policy Institute (PPI) offers a new database lodging the average retirement ages according to the professions. Patrick Aubert, statistician and economist, is based on INSEE data in the second quarter of 2022 in the third quarter of 2023 – period during which legal age was still set at 62and that of cancellation of the discount at 67 years (a threshold maintained by the recent reform) – to give field indicators.

What is the average retirement age by business?

One of the first observations is that employees exercising qualification professions “intermediate” are those who go back to retirement. Conversely, “Most of the trades little or conversely highly qualified are generally retired later», Underlines the Institute of Public Policy (PPI).

However, this trend deserves to be nuanced. The PPI specifies, in fact, that there is a strong heterogeneity within each category (unskilled, intermediary or strongly qualified). Certain more qualified professions can go back to retirement earlier than others, however much less qualified. For example, the organization indicates that commercial executives as well as engineers and production executives “Liquidate their retirement rights to 62.5 or 62.6 years on average in 2022-2023». In comparison, cleaning workers and workers, as are cleaning agents and service agents in the public sector already left, before the reform, retired later: on average at 64.1 years.

Certain professions can also go back to retirement earlier thanks to specific devices. This is particularly the case for professions relating to the so-called “active” categories in the public service, such as nurses, nursing assistants or police. Other professions, such as train drivers, are special regimes which also provide more favorable departure conditions. These are not observed in all branches. Indeed, the PPI raises that drivers or drivers of waste collection leave for example at 63.1 years on average, and social service assistants at 62.8 years.

Gender inequality? Not necessarily

In addition to these specificities linked to the positions occupied, the place of the individual route remains significant, in particular with retirements later for women with interrupted careers. “”The high average age of departure observed for most professions of unskilled employees thus derives, probably, to the fact that they are practiced mainly by women whose career has been interrupted (probably to raise their children) and who must therefore wait for the age of cancellation of the 67 -year -old discount to liquidate their full rate rights “details the IPP.

However, be careful not to generalize the disparities between men and women. As Patrick Aubert mentions, the comparison of the ages of retirement to retirement by sex “can be misleading». Certain more feminized professions, such as home aid, display late departures, linked to incomplete careers. Others, such as nurses or teachers, leave earlier thanks to early starting devices. But similar disparities also exist on the side of male professions. Some qualified workers or technicians, eligible for the long career system, leave before legal age. Others, on the other hand, especially in the sectors “strongly masculinized», Repeat only active life after 63 or even 64 years old.

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