March 26, 2008 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Retirement benefits of State and local government workers

In State and local government, 89 percent of workers had access to employer-sponsored retirement benefits in September 2007.

[Chart data—TXT]

Access to retirement benefits varied by worker characteristics such as work schedule (full vs. part time), union status, and earnings. Full-time workers, union workers, and those in occupations with average earnings of $15 an hour and above had higher rates of coverage for retirement benefits.

Almost three times as many workers had access to defined benefit plans (83 percent) than to defined contribution plans (29 percent). Nearly all workers (96 percent) who had access to a defined benefit retirement plan chose to participate in it, whereas only 63 percent of workers with access to defined contribution plans chose to enroll in them.

These data are from the BLS National Compensation Survey. Learn more in "National Compensation Survey: Employee Benefits in State and Local Governments in the United States, September 2007," (PDF) Summary 08-02, March 2008.