The Multiemployer Retirement Plan Landscape: A 15-Year Look (2009-2023)

For the eleventh year, Horizon Actuarial Services, LLC, and the International Foundation have partnered to produce an annual benchmarking report on multiemployer pension and retirement plans, The Multiemployer Retirement Plan Landscape: A 15-Year Look (2009-2023). The report covers both defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) retirement plan data from Form 5500 Annual Reports filed annually with the U.S. Department of Labor. Using fifteen years of data, it analyzes trends in demographics, cash flows, and investments to provide trustees, consultants and policy makers with a better understanding of these plans and the environment in which they operate.

Highlights from the survey include:

• A significant number of mergers among multiemployer plans occurred in 2023 as 17 plans filed their final Form 5500, the largest number in the 15-year period of the report.
• As special financial assistance (SFA) money continued to work its way into the Form 5500 data, 37 plans were identified as having moved from critical and declining status into critical status in 2023.
• The median annualized return from 2009 through 2023 was 7.9% for multiemployer DB plans. For multiemployer DC plans, over the same period, the median annualized return was 7.4%.
• Comparing DB and DC plans, there were 1,153 ongoing solvent multiemployer DB plans with total assets of about $706 billion and covered about 11 million participants and beneficiaries. Whereas there were 1,021 multiemployer DC plans with total assets of approximately $236 billion and covered approximately 5 million participants and beneficiaries.
• A significant majority of multiemployer DC plans—at least 75%—are associated with a multiemployer DB plan. In other words, most DC plans provide retirement income that supplements retirement income provided by a DB plan.

View the Report

Members of the media can request a copy from [email protected].