Help workers save for retirement
About 2 million Pennsylvanians work for businesses that do not offer retirement benefits. That’s bad for workers and, eventually, for taxpayers who tend to absorb social service costs for people who retire with inadequate savings.
Nationwide, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts, only 27% of people who don’t have work-based retirement plans have saved any money for retirement. And among the 47% of workers nationally who do not have access to work-based plans, only about 40% have contributed to other retirement plans.
Research shows that people are far more likely to save for retirement if they can do so through payroll deduction. Many employers provide incentives for workers to participate, contributing to individual accounts if employees agree to contribute a certain percentage of their pay.
Pew research shows that most people who are not enrolled in work-based plans not only do not save otherwise for retirement, but never have access to retirement plan tools that calculate likely future needs and saving rates.
Most businesses that do not offer retirement benefits are small and lack the revenue or the administrative wherewithal to provide savings plans. But in a Pew survey, 67% of such businesses said that they would make a state-operated plan available to their employees.
Bills are pending in the Legislature to create a program, Keystone Saves.
The savings instrument is known as an auto-IRA, for individual retirement account. Employers would need only to register and allow for payroll deduction of workers’ contributions. To engage as many workers as possible, employees would have to opt out of contributing. Contributions would be tax-deferred, and the accounts would be fully portable, going with workers if they leave for a different job.
Pew calculates that Pennsylvania will have 57 households age 65 and older by 2030 for every 100 households under that age, a 50% increase since 2015. The state Treasury has estimated that state costs due to inadequate individual retirement savings will total $14.3 billion from 2015 through 2030.
Keystone Saves would improve retirement security and reduce taxpayers’ burden without imposing undue costs on anyone. The Legislature should approve it.