The average retirement age in Sweden in 2022 was 64.8 years for those who started withdrawing a public pension during the year, according to figures from the Swedish Pensions Agency (SPA).

It found very little difference between the average retirement ages of men (64.9 years) and women (64.8 years).

The SPA noted that the variation over the time is relatively small, with the average retirement age only differing by five months between the highest and lowest average retirement age since 2004.

“We saw a relatively large increase in the average retirement age from 2019 to 2020 when increased age limits were introduced for the pension,” said SPA analyst, Linnea Wikmark Kreuger.

“But we are now back in a trend where the average retirement age is slowly falling.”

The occupations with the highest average retirement age were university and college teachers, where men retire at 66.8 years old on average and women retire at 66.7 years old.

The lowest average retirement age for women, at an average of 63.7 years, is among machine operators.

For men, the job with the lowest average retirement age was process and machine operators at steel and metal works, at 64 years.

The SPA also found that there was a gap in pension earnings between domestic and foreign-born people who started drawing an income pension in 2022.

There was a difference of 19.5 years in average earnings for an income-based pension between the groups, a gap that has increased compared to both 2020 and 2021.

SPA analyst, Robin Fondberg, commented: “The spread in the number of years earned is very large among those born abroad and an average is not really representative, there is a large group with a few years of earnings but also many individuals with over 40 years of earnings.”

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