If you think it is tough to make ends meet now, wait until you retire.

Last week brought another alarming revelation about how few workers are putting money aside for later life. At the same time, there were fresh figures on the contrasting fortunes of older generations.

The latest report to suggest the current cohort of retiring workers is sitting pretty came from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. It found that the vast majority of couples born in the 1940s are more than wealthy enough to maintain their standard of living through retirement. A large proportion – more than two-fifths – enjoy a greater income in retirement than their average real earnings during working life.

The picture for future generations may look quite different, the thinktank says. But its research into the 1940s babies shows that even without counting the substantial housing wealth many have amassed, 80% of couples had an income at age 65 from both state and private pensions equal to two-thirds of their average working-life earnings.

It is hard to see how those who will follow them into retirement can keep up the pattern. Today's retiring pensioners are very likely to be the "as good as it gets" generation. Younger people, if they are lucky enough to be in regular work, say scraping together a deposit for their first home is hard enough. Looking towards retirement is a saving too far.

This trend was laid bare last week in official figures on the large numbers of people below retirement age in Britain without any private pension savings at all. Almost half of women and 45% of men had not paid into a private pension scheme, according to data from 2010-12 analysed by the Office for National Statistics.

There were worrying signs too that the rising inequality of recent years will be compounded in the future when these younger generations retire. Those households that did have a private pension also had average wealth of £160,000 – nearly seven times the wealth of households without a private pension.

The numbers were gathered before the government introduced automatic enrolment into workplace pensions in late 2012. The "we're all in" scheme to make employers put workers into a private pension unless the employee opts out will certainly help change things. More than four million people have already been signed up. Pensions minister Steve Webb informs us that this is enough people to fill 10,000 jumbo jets and he has hailed the new wave of workers "saving for their retirement for the first time or saving more" thanks to the changes.

But before we get carried away, there is little to suggest that these new savers will have the luxury of taking many planes in retirement, far less of splashing out on a Lamborghini – to recall Webb's remark that he was comfortable with the sweeping liberalisation of pensions rules this year that would leave people free to splurge their retirement cash on a sports car.

It is widely accepted that the contribution rates are too low to provide a decent retirement income. More importantly, auto-enrolment only applies to those earning more than £10,000 a year. As the Trades Union Congress (TUC) points out, this means the majority of the UK's six million part-time workers are missing out. Auto-enrolment is a good start but no silver bullet.

There are essentially two problems with Britain's labour market. One is temporary, the other permanent.

The first is the long squeeze on living standards since the financial crisis six years ago, which may be nearing an end, but will show in meagre pension pots decades down the line. The second, which looks more permanent, is a growing number of people trapped in low-wage work.

Bank of England governor Mark Carney told the TUC's conference last week that inflation-busting pay rises will finally arrive next summer. Interest rates may well rise before then, he warned.

That is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, but what a long one it has been: pay growth has not been consistently above inflation since 2008 and Carney is telling workers to brace for one more year plus a rate hike.

Personal finance experts say the mismatch between pay and living costs is hitting savings rates. Claire Turner, who leads research into our ageing society for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, points out that people in their 30s and 40s have just about been able to save for Christmas or holidays, or to put aside some money to allow for the risk of redundancy.

"For some people the cost of living means it is hard to think beyond next year, never mind putting money into a pension," she says.

On top of that comes the debt burden that many young workers start out with. Michelle Highman, who runs the financial education organisation The Money Charity, notes the increasing numbers graduating with large student debts. "The rise in tuition fees and subsequently student loans will increasingly play a part in how young people save for retirement," she predicts.

But the second, wider problem is a shift to a more polarised labour market with a growing number of people trapped in low-wage work, and this looks like it is here to stay.

Real wages will eventually rise again but insecure, low-paying jobs will remain widespread. This can only be reversed with more emphasis on lifelong learning, fairer employment terms and a real rebalancing of the economy towards high-productivity sectors such as manufacturing.

What we have instead is an army of self-employed, a proliferation of zero-hours contracts and underemployed workers. Low pay is common and the minimum wage has become a long-term pay grade rather than the starting salary it was set up to be. Savings rates remain low and jobs are no longer for life. Tomorrow's pensioners will be facing a whole new cost of living crisis.