As the American business landscape shifts company-sponsored retirement plans are becoming less common. A recent analysis of census bureau data conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute indicates that less than 50% of employed Americans enjoy such a plan. So who is being offered such plans? And who participates?
Full-time employees enjoy better benefits than part-timers. This doesn’t seem a surprise and in addition to being offered more benefit opportunities, full-timer workers also participate in their plans with greater frequency than part-timers.
Public-sector employees participate in work-sponsored retirement plans in far greater percentages (73 percent versus 39 percent) than with private-sector employees. If you happen to be in the private sector, however, it pays to work at a large company. At companies with 1,000 or more employees, more than half (55 percent) enroll in a retirement plan while that percentage drops to 14% at companies with fewer than 10 employees.
Workers with higher education degrees tend to participate in greater percentages that those without such degrees. Manufacturing, information, and financial services industries tend to offer more opportunities than service industry professions. Paralleling this trend is the fact that workers who earn higher incomes participate more actively than lower wage workers.
Finally, geography matters. Workers in southern and western states participate far less than people in the Mid-Atlantic and upper Midwest.
While these highlights might not make you pack up and move, or change careers, it’s certainly good to be aware of where one might find work that can offer you opportunities for growing your nest egg and working towards a healthy, robust retirement.
Source: U.S. News and World Report