PBGC Releases Annual Update on Pension Data

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) has released an annual update of its Data Book. The Data Book provides information pension plans and the PBGC have reported on single-employer and multiemployer plans and compares it to data from previous years. This update provides data from the federal fiscal year (FY) 2014, with some newer data as well.

This update presents information on a range of topics including:

• number of people and plans the PBGC protects;

• number of people receiving or eligible to receive benefits from the PBGC;

• benefits paid to participants and beneficiaries;

• claims against the PBGC;

• funding status of PBGC-protected plans; and

• analysis of populations that the PBGC protects by industry, state and other statistics.

For FY 2014, the update reports a net deficit of $19.338 trillion for single-employer plans and $42.434 for multiemployer plans for a total of $61.772 trillion. This breaks down in the following manner:

• total assets of $88.782 trillion ($88.013 trillion single-employer, $1.789 trillion multiemployer); and

• total liabilities of $161.664 trillion ($107.361 trillion single-employer, $44.203 trillion multiemployer).

The update also includes the following information:

Insured plans
Single-employer: 22,344
Multiemployer: 1,426

Insured participants
Single-employer: 30.9 million
Multiemployer: 10.3 million

Payees paid directly
Single-employer: 813,000
Multiemployer: 50

The PBGC added a new multiemployer table that includes time series data on participants in plans, by zone status as defined under the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA) through 2013. The PBGC issued additional data on zone status for prior years as a multiemployer graphical supplement in April.

Zone status refers to multiemployer plan statuses as defined under the PPA, which describe the financial condition of multiemployer plans, and rates them as critical, seriously endangered, endangered and other.