Canadian Retirement Age is 60.

The median age for retirement in Canada between 1997 and 2001 is 60.8 years.  Self-employed people still work until 65, and private employees work until 61.7 but the big winners in the retire-early sweepstakes are public sector employees, retiring at 57.6. Only 7% of people work until age 70.

Of course general statistics are just that, very general, and can be divided further, by province, by gender, by educational level, by occupations. For example,  between the years 1997 and 2001 women high school graduates retired on average at 60, and men by age 62. University graduate women retire at age 56.3, and men 59.8 years.  That is almost a four year difference for women and a two year difference for men.

The two year difference between men and women might be explained by a common two-year age difference between spouses and the fact that couples often retire at the same time.

Retirement trends have been moving downward quite significantly. Between 1987 and 1990 only 29% of people retired before the age of 60. Between 1997 and 2000 43% of workers did. 

These are figures from Statistics Canada.

Mahara