Retirement benefits most prevalent in Midwest

In March 2014, 68 percent of the nation's civilian workers had access to employer-provided retirement benefits, with access rates varying somewhat by region. Workers in the West were the least likely to have access to retirement benefits, while Midwestern workers were the most likely. In the Mountain and Pacific states in the West, access rates were 63 and 65 percent, respectively; in the Midwest, the access rates were 71 percent for the East North Central states and 74 percent for the West North Central states.

 

Access to retirement benefits varied more by establishment size (number of employees) than by regional geography: 46 percent of workers at the smallest establishments (those with fewer than 50 employees) had access to retirement benefits, compared with 90 percent of workers at the largest establishments (those with 500 or more employees).

These data are from the National Compensation Survey - Benefits program. For more information, see "Table 2. Retirement benefits: Access, participation, and take-up rates, civilian workers, March 2014" (HTML) (PDF), under "Civilian" on the Retirement Benefits, March 2014 section of Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2014, Bulletin 2779. Civilian workers include workers in the private nonfarm economy except those in private households, and workers in the public sector, except the federal government.