What percent of DUers have a defined benefit pension plan?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. I have one, from a job in the 1970s.

I worked there ten years and so was vested when I left.

Luckily I never expected it to amount to much. I am getting less than a third of what it should be, thanks to a bankruptcy or two and throwing off the pension obligation. I genuinely feel for the employees who stayed there thirty years or more, who were counting on a decent pension, and then saw it cut by two thirds.

I also wish people would stop worshipping at the Altar of Pensions Past. Not every company had them, and often you had to work for thirty or more years to get it. But most people never stayed a lifetime at one company. So in reality, even when a lot of companies offered define benefit pension plans, only a smaller percentage of the workers ever retired with an actual pension.

I do believe federal law requires that an employee be vested after five years, an improvement from when it could take ten years to vest. But companies need to be absolutely required to properly fund them.

The real crisis that is looming is that cities, counties, and states are drastically underfunding their pension obligations. And often those jobs didn't pay into Social Security, so those retirees will have nothing at all to fall back on, unless they saved money of their own all along.