State Initiatives to Cover Uncovered Private Sector Workers

The brief’s key findings are:

• Half of private sector workers are not covered by an employer-sponsored retirement plan.
• The federal government has made no progress on closing this coverage gap, so the states are stepping into the breach:
  • Four states have adopted a mandatory Auto-IRA program.
  • Two other states are setting up voluntary marketplaces.
• Of these two approaches, the Auto-IRA would be much more effective.
• But a national Auto-IRA would be much better than 50 separate state plans.