EBRI says employer pension plans on the rebound
Via the Wall St. Journal:
During the worst of the Great Recession, some companies stopped offering retirement plans to their employees; at the same time, many savers who had such plans stopped contributing to them, as they struggled with financial pressures like a spouse’s unemployment. But a new study from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a non-partisan think tank, suggests that both of those trends may be reversing. The institute reports that the percentage of workers whose employers offer retirement plans, and the percentage of workers participating in them, are both higher than they were during the recession – higher, in fact, than they’ve been since 2003.
EBRI’s report, which is based on Census Bureau survey data, says that 61% of all workers age 16 or over had access to a retirement plan through either their employer or a union in 2012, up from 59% in 2009. The share of workers participating in those plans reached 46%, up from 45% in 2009 and 44% in 2006. If you exclude agricultural workers, the access and participation numbers rise higher, to 65% and 49%, respectively, for 2012.