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PBGC Issues Annual Pension Data Update

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) has released its annual update on pension data. The report provides information reported by pension plans and the PBGC and compares it to data from earlier years.

The report includes statistics for PBGC’s single-employer and multiemployer programs and for the private DB pension system, including state-by-state information. It provides information on:

  • net financial position of programs;
  • claims for single-employer programs;
  • benefit payments;
  • coverage;
  • PBGC premiums for single-employer programs;
  • funding levels of insured plans;
  • state data for single-employer programs;
  • the numbers of people and plans the PBGC protect;
  • the number of people receiving or eligible to receive benefits from the PBGC and the benefits paid to them;
  • claims against the PBGC;
  • the funded status of PBGC-protected plans; and
  • breakdowns of populations the PBGC protects by industry and state.

The report includes the following data concerning fiscal year 2014:

Single-employer Program

  • assets of $88 billion and liabilities of $107 billion, for a net liability of $19 billion;
  • premium revenue of nearly $4 billion;
  • 22,344 insured plans;
  • 30.9 million insured participants; and
  • nearly $5.5 billion in benefits paid.
Multiemployer Program

  • assets of $1.8 billion and liabilities of $44 billion, for a net liability of more than $42 billion;
  • premium revenue of nearly $122 million;
  • 1,425 insured plans;
  • 10.3 million insured participants; and
  • less than $500,000 in benefits paid.
At least some of the news is better than the raw figures may suggest. The assets for the single-employer and the multiemployer program grew from 2013 to 2014, and the liabilities for the single-employer program fell from 2013 to 2014. The liabilities for the multiemployer program jumped sharply from 2013 to 2014, however.