Fewer companies offer defined benefit pension plans today than in the early 1980s, so GE’s announced pension buyout is part of a larger trend, says Wharton Prof. Olivia S. Mitchell here. Image courtesy of Chuck Miller.
Wharton Professors Olivia S. Mitchell and Marshall Meyer put GE’s pension freeze/buyout in context and discuss potential fallouts: @WhartonKnows journal & podcast here. Image courtesy of Jeff Turner.
Only 16% of the Fortune 500 still offer defined benefit plans, vs 60% 30 years ago, says Wharton’s Olivia S. Mitchell, discussing the announcement that GE will freeze pension accruals for 20K employees & offering lump sums to 100K more. Read here.http://bit.ly/2MlBmbk Image courtesy of Chuck Miller.
GE plans to freeze defined benefit accruals of 20K workers and offer lump sum buyouts to 100K former employees, seeking to cut debt. This aligns GE with most larger US companies today as defined benefit pension plans grow rare, says Wharton’s Olivia S. Mitchell here. Image courtesy of…Read More
GE is freezing defined benefit plans for 20K workers and offering 100K former workers lump-sum buyouts, as it seeks to cut debt and risk. This is part of a decades-long trend away from defined benefit pension and toward defined contribution plans in the US, states Wharton’s Olivia S. Mitchell in…Read More
Multiemployer pension plans in the United States are in dire financial straits. It’s estimated that the retirement plans of workers and retirees covered by these plans in the mining, retail trade, construction, transportation and other such sectors face a $54 billion shortfall today.…Read More
Olivia S. Mitchell and Elizabeth Kennedy discuss implications of the treasury department’s decision to allow employers to pay out retirees’ pensions with a one-time lump sum payment, thus reversing Obama-era guidance that had banned this practice. Listen to the full piece above. Interview begins at 3:35. This segment originally aired…Read More
Some observers have recently suggested that multiemployer or industry pension plans in the U.S. have bounced back fully since the 2008 recession, and it’s time to break out the champagne. Not so fast!…Read More
Recently some analysts have queried: why do so few Americans participate in their pension plans? For this purpose, the pension participation rates, or the fraction of employees who either contribute to a defined contribution (DC) plan or are covered by a defined benefit (DB) plan, is often used as a key performance metric for the U.S. voluntary employer plan system.…Read More
Concerns are growing about how to best manage risk in retirement. Traditional defined benefit plans can impart considerable risk to employers, while 401(k)-type plans place all or most risk on employees.…Read More
