Fewer Employers Offering Defined Benefit Pension Plans to New Salaried Employees

The percentage of the largest U.S. employers that offer a defined benefit pension plan to new salaried employees continues to fall, according to new research.

As of June 30, 30 percent of Fortune 100 companies offered a defined benefit plan to new salaried employees, according to New York-based Towers Watson & Co. That’s down from 33 percent at the end of 2011, 37 percent in 2010 and 43 percent in 2009.

As recently as 1998, defined benefit plans were the norm among the nation’s largest employers, when 90 percent of Fortune 100 companies offered the plans to new salaried employees.

Since then, large employers have moved away from the plans. “Large employers have been reassessing their retirement offerings for some time. … The shift is motivated by several factors, including employers’ desire to reduce overall retirement costs — perhaps due to higher compensation and benefit costs elsewhere, especially health care — perceptions that workers prefer more portable plans, market trends, and the belief that such a shift reduces financial risk,” Towers Watson said in an article posted Oct. 2 in The Insider, a company publication.

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