US Retirement Savings Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: David Park | Last updated: October 4, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
Americans held a record $51.2 trillion in retirement assets on June 30, 2026, according to the Investment Company Institute. Yet according to Axis Intelligence Research, an estimated 60.6 million private-sector workers participated in no workplace retirement plan in March 2026, based on BLS National Compensation Survey data.
Quick Answer
US retirement assets reached $51.2 trillion in Q2 2026 (ICI), with $19.9 trillion in IRAs and $15.0 trillion in employer DC plans. Only 54.3% of families own any retirement account (Federal Reserve). The median Vanguard 401(k) balance is $44,115. According to Axis Intelligence Research, the Workplace Retirement Exclusion Index (WREX) reads 48 for private industry: nearly half of private workers are outside any plan.
Key Findings
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, an estimated 60.6 million US private-sector workers did not participate in any employer retirement plan as of March 2026, derived from BLS participation data and the 126.3 million workers the survey represents.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, 35.4 million of those workers had no plan offered at all, while 25.3 million had access to a plan but were not enrolled.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, the lowest-paid quarter of private workers scores 78 on the WREX, 4.1 times the score of the highest-paid quarter (19).
- The Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances found 45.7% of US families held no retirement account of any kind, the most recent official household-level figure available.
- The Social Security Trustees project the OASI trust fund will be depleted in late 2032, after which incoming revenue covers 78% of scheduled retirement and survivor benefits.
How Much Do Americans Have Saved for Retirement in 2026?
Total US retirement assets stood at $51.2 trillion as of June 30, 2026, up 7.9% from March, according to the Investment Company Institute’s Q2 2026 retirement market release published September 17, 2026. Retirement assets equal 33% of all US household financial assets.
US Retirement Assets by Account Type, Q2 2026
| Account type | Assets | Q2 change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual retirement accounts (IRAs) | $19.9 trillion | +9.2% | ICI |
| Employer defined contribution (DC) plans | $15.0 trillion | +8.7% | ICI |
| of which 401(k) plans | $10.8 trillion | n/a | ICI |
| of which 403(b) plans | $1.6 trillion | n/a | ICI |
| of which Thrift Savings Plan | $1.2 trillion | n/a | ICI |
| of which other private DC plans | $920 billion | n/a | ICI |
| of which 457 plans | $585 billion | n/a | ICI |
| Government defined benefit (DB) plans | $10.4 trillion | +5.1% | ICI |
| Private-sector DB plans | $3.2 trillion | n/a | ICI |
| Annuity reserves outside retirement accounts | $2.7 trillion | n/a | ICI |
| Total | $51.2 trillion | +7.9% | ICI |
According to Axis Intelligence Research, account-based savings (IRAs plus DC plans) total $34.9 trillion, or 68.2% of all US retirement assets. IRAs alone hold 38.9% of the total, and 401(k) plans account for 72.0% of all DC plan money.
Commentary (David Park): The IRA line is the one most people misread. A large share of those dollars started life in a 401(k) and rolled over when someone changed jobs, so the IRA total is partly a record of career moves, not a separate group of savers. The practical point for anyone switching employers this year: the rollover decision is not paperwork. It is where a decade of payroll deductions either stays invested or leaks out as a cashed-out check.
Mutual funds manage $15.9 trillion, or 46%, of assets in IRAs and DC plans, and 58% of 401(k) assets ($6.2 trillion), per ICI. The fund-firm side of this market is covered in our Vanguard statistics and Fidelity Investments statistics pages, where we measure how concentrated recordkeeping has become.
What Share of Americans Have a Retirement Account?
54.3% of US families held a retirement account in 2022, up from 50.5% in 2019, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances. The SCF is triennial; the 2025 survey results had not been published as of this update, so 2022 remains the most recent official household figure.
That leaves 45.7% of families with no IRA, 401(k), 403(b), or thrift account at all, per Axis Intelligence Research calculation from the Fed data.
Retirement Account Ownership and Balances, 2019 vs 2022
| Measure | 2019 | 2022 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Families holding a retirement account | 50.5% | 54.3% | Federal Reserve SCF |
| Conditional median balance (holders only) | $75,300 | $86,900 | Federal Reserve SCF |
| Conditional mean balance (holders only) | n/a | $334,000 | Federal Reserve SCF |
Values in 2022 dollars. “Conditional” means calculated only among families that own an account.
Commentary (David Park): The $86,900 median circulates online as “the median American’s retirement savings.” It is not. It is the median among families who have an account, which excludes the 45.7% who have nothing. The honest reading: the typical account holder has roughly one year of median family income saved, and close to half of families have no account to measure.
Why Is the Median 401(k) Balance So Much Lower Than the Average?
The average Vanguard participant balance was $167,970 at year-end 2025, while the median was $44,115, according to Vanguard’s How America Saves 2026 preview. The average rose 13% and the median 16% year over year.
According to Axis Intelligence Research, the average sits 3.8 times above the median. A small number of long-tenured, high-income accounts pull the mean upward; the median is the better benchmark for a typical saver.
Average Retirement Account Balances, Two Recordkeepers
| Account | Average balance | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fidelity 401(k) | $155,800 | June 30, 2026 | Fidelity Q2 2026 |
| Fidelity 403(b) | $145,000 | June 30, 2026 | Fidelity Q2 2026 |
| Fidelity IRA | $144,523 | June 30, 2026 | Fidelity Q2 2026 |
| Vanguard DC plans (average) | $167,970 | Dec. 31, 2025 | Vanguard HAS 2026 |
| Vanguard DC plans (median) | $44,115 | Dec. 31, 2025 | Vanguard HAS 2026 |
The Fidelity figures come from the Fidelity Q2 2026 Retirement Analysis, covering 25.8 million 401(k) participants across 27,300 corporate plans. Fidelity and Vanguard samples differ in plan mix and dates, so the two averages should be read side by side, not averaged together.
Retirement Savings Gap by Income: The 16.7x Divide
Among families aged 35 to 64 holding an IRA or DC account, mean balances diverge sharply by income, per the Federal Reserve SCF:
| Usual income percentile | Mean IRA + DC balance (2022) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Bottom half (0 to 49.9) | $54,700 | Federal Reserve SCF |
| Upper middle (50 to 89.9) | $226,700 | Federal Reserve SCF |
| Top decile (90 to 100) | $913,300 | Federal Reserve SCF |
| All holders aged 35 to 64 | $331,400 | Federal Reserve SCF |
According to Axis Intelligence Research, top-decile holders carry 16.7 times the mean balance of bottom-half holders. The bottom-half mean actually fell from $66,600 in 2019 to $54,700 in 2022, which the Fed attributes partly to younger, lower-balance families joining plans. More detail on the top tier sits in our US high-net-worth statistics.
How Many Workers Have No Workplace Retirement Plan?
72% of private-industry workers had access to a retirement plan in March 2026, and 52% participated, according to the BLS Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2026 release published September 25, 2026. Among state and local government workers, 92% had access and 81% participated.
BLS reports that the survey represents 126,297,800 private-industry workers. Applying the published rates:
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, an estimated 60.6 million private workers participate in no employer plan (126.3M x 48%).
- 35.4 million have no plan offered (126.3M x 28%).
- 25.3 million are offered a plan but are not enrolled (126.3M x 20%).
These are estimates built on BLS rounded percentages, so each figure carries a margin of roughly plus or minus 0.6 million from rounding alone. Private-industry coverage in the NCS excludes the self-employed and private household workers, so the true count of Americans outside a workplace plan is higher.
Commentary (David Park): If you are one of the 25 million who has a plan and hasn’t joined, the published match data says what you are leaving behind. Fidelity’s average employer contribution is 4.8% of pay. On a $50,000 salary that is $2,400 a year, before a dollar of market return. No raise negotiation is that easy.
The Workplace Retirement Exclusion Index (WREX): Who Is Left Out, and Why
The Workplace Retirement Exclusion Index (WREX) is an Axis Intelligence Research metric that measures the share of workers in a segment who participate in no employer retirement plan, then splits that exclusion into its two causes.
Formula:
- WREX = 100 minus participation rate
- Access Gap (AG) = 100 minus access rate (no plan offered)
- Enrollment Gap (EG) = access rate minus participation rate (offered, not enrolled)
- Access Share of Exclusion (ASX) = AG divided by WREX, times 100
WREX runs from 0 (everyone participates) to 100 (no one does). AG plus EG always equals WREX. All inputs are BLS NCS March 2026 private-industry rates. The index matters because the two gaps call for opposite fixes: an access gap needs employers to offer a plan (or a state auto-IRA or pooled employer plan), while an enrollment gap needs plan design, mainly automatic enrollment.
WREX Ranking: Private-Industry Segments, March 2026
| Segment | Access | Participation | WREX | Access Gap | Enrollment Gap | ASX | Dominant cause |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part-time workers | 44% | 20% | 80 | 56 | 24 | 70.0% | Access |
| Lowest 25% wage | 48% | 22% | 78 | 52 | 26 | 66.7% | Access |
| Service occupations | 47% | 23% | 77 | 53 | 24 | 68.8% | Access |
| Firms with 1 to 49 workers | 55% | 37% | 63 | 45 | 18 | 71.4% | Access |
| Sales and related occupations | 74% | 43% | 57 | 26 | 31 | 45.6% | Enrollment |
| Mountain census division | 69% | 45% | 55 | 31 | 24 | 56.4% | Access |
| Firms with 50 to 99 workers | 72% | 46% | 54 | 28 | 26 | 51.9% | Mixed |
| South census region | 70% | 48% | 52 | 30 | 22 | 57.7% | Access |
| Transportation and material moving | 80% | 51% | 49 | 20 | 29 | 40.8% | Enrollment |
| All private industry | 72% | 52% | 48 | 28 | 20 | 58.3% | Access |
| Northeast census region | 73% | 59% | 41 | 27 | 14 | 65.9% | Access |
| Full-time workers | 81% | 62% | 38 | 19 | 19 | 50.0% | Mixed |
| Firms with 500+ workers | 91% | 76% | 24 | 9 | 15 | 37.5% | Enrollment |
| Highest 25% wage | 92% | 81% | 19 | 8 | 11 | 42.1% | Enrollment |
| Union workers | 91% | 85% | 15 | 9 | 6 | 60.0% | Access |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research calculation from BLS NCS March 2026, Table 1. “Dominant cause” = Access when ASX is above 55%, Enrollment when below 47%, Mixed otherwise.
What the WREX Shows
According to Axis Intelligence Research, the lowest-paid quarter of private workers scores 78 on the WREX against 19 for the highest-paid quarter, a 4.1x gap. Two-thirds of that low-wage exclusion is an access problem: these workers mostly are never offered a plan.
The sales finding cuts the other way. Sales workers have 74% access, close to the national average, yet a WREX of 57, because 31 points of their exclusion are enrollment. That is the largest enrollment gap of any segment we ranked. Transportation and material moving shows the same pattern: 80% access, but a 29-point enrollment gap. For employers in these sectors, the plan already exists; the missing piece is a default that enrolls people.
Small employers are the clearest access story. Firms with fewer than 50 workers score 63, and 71.4% of that exclusion is plans never offered. This is the segment state auto-IRA programs and pooled employer plans were built for.
Commentary (David Park): The question I would ask before taking any job offer in 2026 is not “is there a 401(k)?” but “does it enroll me automatically, and at what rate?” The WREX data says a plan on paper and a plan you are actually in are two different benefits, and the difference is widest in sales and logistics roles.
Does Automatic Enrollment Close the Participation Gap?
The plan-design data points that way. At year-end 2025, 61% of Vanguard plans used automatic enrollment, rising to 79% among plans with 1,000+ participants, and average plan participation across Vanguard plans reached 86%, according to Vanguard’s How America Saves 2026.
Among Vanguard auto-enrollment plans, 62% default workers at 4% of pay or higher, and 71% add automatic annual escalation. 45% of participants raised their deferral rate in 2025, either actively or through auto-escalation.
Vanguard Plan Participation vs BLS Take-Up: Why We Do Not Merge Them
| Measure | Value | Basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average plan participation, Vanguard plans | 86% | Plan-level average, Vanguard-recordkept plans, 2025 | Vanguard HAS 2026 |
| Take-up rate, all private workers with access | 72% | Worker-weighted national employer survey, March 2026 | BLS NCS |
These figures measure different populations with different methods, so Axis Intelligence Research publishes them side by side rather than computing a gap between them. The direction is still informative: plans run by large recordkeepers, which skew toward larger employers and auto-enrollment, report participation well above the national take-up rate.
How Much Are Americans Saving Each Paycheck?
Fidelity 401(k) savers held a total savings rate of 14.4% in Q2 2026, a record for the second straight quarter, made up of a 9.6% employee rate and a 4.8% employer contribution, per Fidelity’s Q2 2026 analysis. The 403(b) total rate was 12%.
81.2% of Fidelity 401(k) participants saved enough to earn their full employer match. According to Axis Intelligence Research, that means 18.8% of participants who are already enrolled still leave part of the match unclaimed.
2026 Contribution Limits
| Limit | 2026 | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 401(k), 403(b), 457, TSP elective deferral | $24,500 | IRS |
| Catch-up, age 50 and older | $8,000 | IRS |
| Total with standard catch-up | $32,500 | IRS |
| IRA contribution limit | $7,500 | IRS |
| IRA catch-up, age 50 and older | $1,100 | IRS |
Source: IRS IR-2025-111. Full scenarios, including the ages 60 to 63 catch-up, are in our 401(k) contribution limits 2026 guide.
Are Americans Raiding Their Retirement Accounts Early?
6% of Vanguard participants initiated a hardship withdrawal in 2025, up from 5% in 2024, according to Vanguard. 13% had a loan outstanding at year-end 2025, unchanged from 2024. Vanguard notes that easier hardship rules and auto-enrollment of lower-income workers partly explain the rise.
Commentary (David Park): A hardship withdrawal is not a loan; it does not get paid back. If you are weighing one, it is worth knowing that leakage, not market returns, is what usually separates the median balance from the average. And if someone is urging you to move retirement money quickly, read our online fraud statistics first, which document how impostor scams target IRA and 401(k) balances.
How Confident Are Americans About Retirement?
61% of workers said they were confident of having enough money to live comfortably in retirement in January 2026, down from 67% a year earlier, according to the EBRI and Greenwald 2026 Retirement Confidence Survey. Retiree confidence fell from 78% to 73%. Across all Americans surveyed, 64% were confident.
| Group | 2025 | 2026 | Change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workers | 67% | 61% | -6 pts | EBRI RCS |
| Retirees | 78% | 73% | -5 pts | EBRI RCS |
The drop coincides with record balances in recordkeeper data. Higher averages and lower confidence are not a contradiction: the averages describe people already in plans, while confidence surveys include the workers the WREX counts as excluded.
Will Social Security Cuts Arrive Before Most Savers Retire?
The 2026 Social Security Trustees Report projects the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund will be depleted in the fourth quarter of 2032, after which income covers 78% of scheduled benefits. Combined OASI and Disability Insurance reserves last until 2034, with 83% payable. The 75-year actuarial deficit is 4.42% of taxable payroll.
According to Axis Intelligence Research, a 78% payable ratio implies a 22% across-the-board cut to retirement and survivor benefits if Congress does not act before depletion.
Commentary (David Park): For a 55-year-old, 2032 lands inside the first years of retirement. That changes the arithmetic on personal savings: every dollar of account balance is now also a hedge against a benefit formula that is legally scheduled to shrink. The fix is a policy choice, and Congress has acted before; but planning as if 100% arrives on schedule ignores the government’s own projection.
Methodology
Collection. Axis Intelligence Research assembled this dataset from nine primary documents, each fetched and read on October 4, 2026: ICI’s Q2 2026 retirement market release; the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances bulletin; Vanguard’s How America Saves 2026 preview and report page; the BLS Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2026 release; Fidelity’s Q2 2026 Retirement Analysis; the 2026 Social Security Trustees Report highlights; the EBRI/Greenwald 2026 Retirement Confidence Survey release; and IRS release IR-2025-111. No secondary aggregators were used as sources.
Synthesized figures. Worker counts multiply BLS’s 126,297,800 represented private workers by the published non-participation (48%), no-access (28%), and access-without-participation (20%) rates. Share figures (IRA share, account-based share, 401(k) share of DC) divide ICI component values by ICI totals. The income-tier ratio divides the Fed’s top-decile mean ($913,300) by the bottom-half mean ($54,700). Every formula appears in the CSV method_note column.
WREX construction. WREX = 100 minus participation; Access Gap = 100 minus access; Enrollment Gap = access minus participation; ASX = Access Gap / WREX x 100. Inputs are BLS NCS private-industry rates by segment. Equal treatment of all segments; no weighting. Readings update when BLS publishes the next NCS benefits release (expected September 2027). The baseline reading is March 2026.
Scope. BLS percentages are published as whole numbers, so derived worker counts are estimates with rounding margins. NCS private-industry estimates exclude the self-employed. Fed SCF figures are for 2022 and stated in 2022 dollars. Vanguard and Fidelity data describe their own recordkept participants, not all US savers. One requested comparison (Vanguard participation vs BLS take-up as a single gap figure) was declined because the methodologies are incompatible; the declined calculation is logged as a retracted row in the CSV.
About This Dataset
The Retirement Savings Statistics 2026 dataset contains 262 rows covering US retirement assets by account type (Q2 2026), household account ownership and balances (2019 and 2022), recordkeeper balances and savings behavior (2025 to Q2 2026), private-sector plan access and participation across 23 segments (March 2026), the WREX index and its components, Social Security trust fund projections, retirement confidence, and 2026 contribution limits. Each row carries its source organization, document, URL, retrieval date, and a primary-source flag.
License: CC BY 4.0. Free to reuse with attribution.
Download: retirement-savings-statistics-2026.csv | Also on Hugging Face, Kaggle, and GitHub.
Suggested citation: Axis Intelligence Research, Retirement Savings Statistics 2026, 2026.
Cite This Page
APA: Axis Intelligence Research, & Park, D. (2026). Retirement savings statistics 2026: $51.2 trillion saved, 60 million private workers outside the plan [Dataset]. Axis Intelligence. https://axis-intelligence.com/retirement-savings-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research, and David Park. “Retirement Savings Statistics 2026: $51.2 Trillion Saved, 60 Million Private Workers Outside the Plan.” Axis Intelligence, Oct. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/retirement-savings-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research and David Park. “Retirement Savings Statistics 2026: $51.2 Trillion Saved, 60 Million Private Workers Outside the Plan.” Axis Intelligence, October 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/retirement-savings-statistics/.
Retirement Savings Questions, Answered With 2026 Data
How many American workers are not in a workplace retirement plan?
According to Axis Intelligence Research, about 60.6 million private-sector workers participated in no employer retirement plan in March 2026. That estimate applies BLS’s 48% non-participation rate to the 126.3 million private workers the National Compensation Survey represents.
Is the retirement coverage gap mostly about access or about enrollment?
Both, in different places. Nationally, 58.3% of private-sector exclusion is lack of access, per the Axis WREX. Part-time, low-wage, and small-firm workers are mostly never offered a plan; sales and transportation workers are mostly offered one but not enrolled.
Which workers are most likely to have no retirement plan?
Part-time workers have the highest WREX score at 80, followed by the lowest-paid quarter of workers (78) and service occupations (77), based on BLS March 2026 data. Union workers score lowest at 15.
What is the real median retirement savings for an American family?
Among families that own a retirement account, the Federal Reserve’s median was $86,900 in 2022. But 45.7% of families own no account, so the median across all families is far lower; the Fed’s published tables report only the median among holders.
What is the median 401(k) balance in 2026?
The median Vanguard 401(k) participant balance was $44,115 at year-end 2025, up 16% from a year earlier, per Vanguard’s How America Saves 2026. The average was $167,970, about 3.8 times the median.
Where does most US retirement money sit, IRAs or 401(k)s?
IRAs hold more: $19.9 trillion as of June 30, 2026, versus $10.8 trillion in 401(k) plans and $15.0 trillion across all employer DC plans, according to ICI. Much IRA money originated in workplace plans and was rolled over.
Does a 2032 Social Security shortfall mean benefits stop?
No. The 2026 Trustees Report projects that after OASI reserves run out in late 2032, ongoing payroll taxes still cover 78% of scheduled retirement and survivor benefits, implying a 22% cut unless Congress changes the law.
How much of the employer match are enrolled workers missing?
Fidelity reports 81.2% of its 401(k) participants saved enough for the full match in Q2 2026, meaning 18.8% of enrolled savers left some match unclaimed. Fidelity’s average employer contribution is 4.8% of pay.