August 25, 2006 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Retirement plans in 2006

Fifty-one percent of employees in private industry participated in a retirement plan in March 2006.

Percent of workers participating in retirement plans, private industry, National Compensation Survey, March 2006
[Chart data—TXT]

Twenty-percent of employees participated in defined benefit retirement plans, and 43 percent in defined contribution plans. (Some employees participate in both types.)

These data are from the BLS National Compensation Survey program. Learn more in "Employee Benefits in Private Industry, 2006" (PDF) (TXT), news release USDL 06-1482 and in "National Compensation Survey: Employee Benefits in Private Industry in the United States, March 2006," (PDF) Summary 06-05.

Happy 10th Birthday, TED!

The very first issue of The Editor's Desk (TED) was posted on September 28, 1998. TED was the first online-only publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For 10 years, BLS has been committed to posting a new TED article each business day, for a total of over 2,400 articles so far.

Find out more about the story of TED