Pension Statistics (2026)

The defined benefit pension, an employer promise of a guaranteed monthly check for life, has quietly disappeared from most of working America. Just 14% of private industry workers even had access to one in March 2026, and only 9% actively participated, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (see the table below).

The exception is government. Among state and local public employees, 86% have access to a pension and 75% participate. The result is a two-track retirement system: teachers, police, and firefighters still get pensions, while most private workers save on their own through a 401(k).

A defined benefit (DB) plan promises a specific payout, usually a monthly benefit based on your salary and years of service, and the employer bears the investment risk and the responsibility to fund it. A defined contribution (DC) plan like a 401(k) instead puts money in an individual account, and the eventual balance depends on contributions and market returns.

The distinction matters because it shifts risk. Under a pension, the employer must produce the promised income no matter how markets perform. Under a 401(k), the worker absorbs longevity risk and market risk. The four-decade migration from DB to DC is essentially a transfer of that risk from employers to households.

As of March 2026, 75% of all civilian workers had access to a workplace retirement plan of some kind and 56% participated. But the mix has flipped: among private workers, 49% participate in a DC plan and only 9% in a DB plan (see the table below).

Public-sector numbers are almost a mirror image. State and local government DB access is 86% with 75% participating, while their DC participation is just 20%. In the private sector, the 401(k) is the default; in government, the pension still is.

The gap between the two sectors is stark. Private-sector DB access sits at 14% and participation at 9%, while public-sector access is 86% and participation 75% (see the chart below). That is not a small difference, it is a different retirement world.

It also explains why pension debates so often become public-finance debates. Because pensions now concentrate in government, the political and fiscal fights over funding, contributions, and benefit levels play out at statehouses and city councils rather than corporate boardrooms.

Coverage is deeply unequal even within the private sector. In March 2026, private full-time workers participated at 62%, part-timers at just 20%. Among the lowest quarter of earners, only 22% are in any plan, versus 81% of the highest quarter (see the table below).

Firm size matters just as much. Only 37% of workers at firms with fewer than 50 employees participate in a plan, compared with 76% at firms of 500 or more. Small-business and low-wage workers are the least likely to have any employer retirement plan at all, DB or DC.

The retreat has been steady and dramatic. The Social Security Administration found that the share of private wage and salary workers participating in a DB plan fell from 38% in 1980 to 20% by 2008, and it has since drifted to 9% in 2026 (see the chart and table below). Over the same period, DC-only coverage climbed from 8% to 31%.

The plan counts tell the same story. The number of PBGC-insured DB plans peaked at 114,400 in 1985 and had collapsed to about 32,500 by 2002, with most of the losses among small plans. Today the PBGC's single-employer program covers about 22,000 plans with 18.4 million workers and retirees (FY2025).

Corporate America made the shift deliberately. Willis Towers Watson found that just 16% of Fortune 500 companies offered a DB plan to new hires in 2017, down from 59% in 1998. Traditional final-salary pensions fell from about 246 of the Fortune 500 in 1998 to roughly 25 firms, or 5%, by 2015.

The reasons cited are consistent: longer lifespans that raise benefit costs, corporate distaste for volatile and unpredictable contribution requirements, and rising PBGC insurance premiums. A 401(k) hands those risks to the employee and turns an open-ended promise into a predictable annual expense.

Many pensions that still technically exist are no longer building new benefits. Of the Fortune 500 firms that sponsored traditional DB plans in 1998, about 47% later froze or closed the plan and moved new hires into a DC-only setup, while another 43% converted to a hybrid cash-balance design, per Willis Towers Watson.

This is why the private DB take-up rate is so low: workers may nominally have access to a plan that is frozen and accruing nothing for them. A frozen pension protects benefits already earned but stops the clock, which is one reason participation figures keep sliding even where plans remain on the books.

Follow the money and the shift is obvious. Total US retirement assets reached $51.2 trillion at the end of the second quarter of 2026, up 7.9% from March. IRAs held $19.9 trillion and defined contribution plans $15.0 trillion (including $10.8 trillion in 401(k)s), while private-sector DB plans held just $3.2 trillion (see the chart and table below).

Government DB plans remain large at about $10.4 trillion, which is again a reminder that the pension survives mainly in the public sector. The individual-account world of IRAs and 401(k)s now holds more than twice the assets of every defined benefit plan combined.

State and local pensions have clawed back ground. The Equable Institute puts the aggregate funded ratio at 81.2% for fiscal 2025, up from 78.0% in 2024 and 75.4% in 2023, and its October 2026 update estimates 86.0% for fiscal 2026, the highest national average since 2007, helped by an estimated 11.4% average investment return (see the table below).

Even so, the national average remains below the 90% threshold that Equable treats as resilient, as it has every year since 2007. It is the fourth straight year that returns beat the average assumed rate of 6.88%, and Equable notes that a sharp market correction could reverse the gains quickly, as happened in 2022, so the improvement is real but not durable.

Public pensions are enormous. The Census Bureau's Annual Survey of Public Pensions: 2025 reported $6.49 trillion in cash and investments across 311 state-administered funds and 4,061 locally administered systems, up from $5.98 trillion in 2024. About 37 million people are members, counting active and inactive members and beneficiaries.

The cash flows are huge too. Contributions totaled $315.0 billion in 2025 (state and local governments paid $237 billion, active employees $78 billion), while systems paid out $418.2 billion in benefits. Benefit payments exceed contributions by $103.2 billion, which is the minimum that investment earnings must cover.

The headline worry is the gap between what plans owe and what they hold. Equable puts aggregate unfunded liabilities at $1.36 trillion for fiscal 2025 and estimates $1.06 trillion for 2026, the third annual decline in a row but still above the most recent low of $1.00 trillion at the end of 2021. Employers now contribute 31.83 cents of every payroll dollar, a historic high and more than triple the 9.3% rate in 2001, and 22.42 cents of that goes to paying down the unfunded liability.

The pain is concentrated. In Equable's October 2026 estimates, Illinois (57.1%) and New Jersey (57.4%) are the two Distressed states below 60% funded, followed by Kentucky (64.3%) and Mississippi (64.0%), while 21 states are at 90% or higher. Even CalPERS, the largest US public fund at about $563 billion, was only around 75% funded in 2024, below the national average, before a strong 2025 lifted it toward 79%.

For today's retirees, pensions still matter, though less than they once did. About one in three older adults receives some pension income, and 56% of retirees report income from a pension, according to the Pension Rights Center (see the table below).

The amounts reveal the public-private divide again. The median private pension paid $11,440 a year to individuals age 65 and older, while the median state or local government pension paid $24,930, more than double. As younger cohorts retire with 401(k)s instead, the share drawing a traditional pension will keep falling.

If you work in the private sector, the odds are you will never get a pension, which means your retirement security rests on what you save and invest yourself. A 401(k) or IRA hands you the market risk and the longevity risk that an employer used to carry, so the burden of turning savings into lifelong income is now yours.

The practical response is to treat your own accounts like a pension you are self-funding: contribute consistently, capture any employer match, keep costs low, and stay invested for the long run so growth compounds. Building a clear, thesis-driven portfolio, and rebalancing it over time, is how you replace the guaranteed check that most workers no longer receive.