Facts about OregonSaves

Oregon’s auto-IRA program requires employers without a retirement plan to automatically enroll their workers, who are allowed to opt out.  Oregon was the first state to go “live” with its program, in July 2017. 

To date, Oregon has 6,387 actively participating employers and 118,751 worker accounts (see Table 1).  

As of July 2023, 6,387 employers in Oregon have payroll systems in place to process deductions to OregonSaves (see Table 2).  Similar to Illinois, very small employers are not yet required to be registered for the program.  Among firms that have registered, not all have completed setting up their payroll systems.  All employers with at least one employee that do not offer a plan in Oregon are required to participate.

Employers subject to the mandate that do not comply must pay an annual fine of $100 per eligible employee, up to a maximum of $5,000.  Beyond employers subject to the mandate, Oregon is also encouraging self-employed workers to sign up for OregonSaves.

As of July 31, the number of employees with assets in OregonSaves is 115,863.  Given the longer period that the program has been in existence, account balances are higher than in California and Illinois.  The first $1,000 in contributions is defaulted into a money market fund; contributions above this amount are defaulted into a target date fund.  As of the most recent month, roughly 23 percent of eligible workers have chosen to opt out of participating (see Table 3).  

The program, which is intended to eventually become financially self-sufficient, had assets under management of $217.1 million by the end of July 2023 (see Table 4).  To pay for its operating costs, OregonSaves charges a fixed annual fee of $16 and an asset-based fee of approximately 0.5 percent.

OregonSaves performance dashboards (Office of the State Treasurer)

OregonSaves program website

Quinby et al. (2019)