What Percentage of Americans Have a 401(k) Plan?

About 56% of civilian workers in the United States participate in a workplace retirement plan, and among workers whose employer actually offers a 401(k) they qualify for, 82% are enrolled.¹² So the real question behind “what percentage of Americans have a 401(k) plan” isn’t whether workers want to save. It’s whether their employer set up a plan in the first place.

The Two Numbers That Matter

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks three figures: access (whether your employer offers a plan you qualify for), participation (whether you’re actually enrolled), and take-up (participation as a share of those with access). For civilian workers overall, 75% have access to a retirement benefit, 56% participate, and the take-up rate lands at roughly 75%.¹

Public-sector workers pull the overall numbers up. State and local government plans cover about 92% of employees. In the private sector alone, only 72% have access and 53% participate.

Vanguard’s picture of the workers already inside the system looks better. Across its recordkept plans, 82% of eligible employees were enrolled in 2024, up four percentage points since 2015.² Plans that default employees in see a 94% participation rate. Plans that rely on voluntary sign-up sit at 64%.

Why Millions of Workers Still Don’t Have One

Whether you have a 401(k) depends mostly on where you work. At firms with 500 or more employees, roughly 90% of workers have access to a retirement benefit. At firms with fewer than 100 workers, only about 59% do.¹ Small employers point to the cost and administrative burden of running a plan, and the workers most affected are concentrated in lower-wage service jobs.

Part-time work makes the gap worse. In the private sector, 81% of full-time employees have access to retirement benefits. For part-time workers, that drops to 47%.¹ A SECURE 2.0 Act provision that took effect in 2025 now requires employers with a 401(k) to let long-term part-time employees contribute. A part-timer who works at least 500 hours in two consecutive years and is at least 21 qualifies to make elective deferrals.³ Employers, however, aren’t required to match their contributions.

State Auto-IRAs Are Filling the Gap

Where employers won’t set up a plan, states increasingly step in. As of early 2026, 21 states have enacted retirement savings programs for private-sector workers, and 17 of them run as auto-IRA programs that require employers without a plan to automatically enroll employees into a state-facilitated IRA.⁴ California, Illinois, Oregon, and Colorado were early adopters, and programs in 15 auto-IRA states are now fully open to all eligible employers and workers. These aren’t 401(k)s, and the contribution limits follow lower IRA rules, but they exist so workers at small employers have something rather than nothing.

Automatic Enrollment Is Doing the Heavy Lifting

Plan design changes participation more than any financial-literacy campaign. When employees have to opt out rather than opt in, almost nobody opts out. By the end of 2024, 61% of Vanguard’s recordkept plans had adopted some form of automatic enrollment, and those plans posted a 94% participation rate.²

SECURE 2.0 will push those numbers higher. Any 401(k) plan established after December 29, 2022 must include automatic enrollment as a condition of remaining a qualified plan. New employees are defaulted in at a contribution rate between 3% and 10% of pay, with an annual one-point increase until the rate reaches at least 10% (and no more than 15%).⁵ Older plans are grandfathered under voluntary enrollment. Small businesses with ten or fewer employees, companies less than three years old, and church and government plans are exempt.

Who Participates, and Who Doesn’t

Even where access is equal, participation isn’t. Income splits workers hardest. Employees earning $150,000 or more participate at about 95%. Those earning under $15,000 participate at 31%.² Someone earning $14,000 rarely has money left after rent and groceries to lock away until age 59½.

Age patterns are what you’d expect. Workers under 25 participate at 54%, held down by part-time and temporary positions and by how abstract retirement feels early on. Participation climbs to 82% for ages 25 to 34, peaks around 86% to 87% for workers between 35 and 64, and dips to 79% for those 65 and older who are winding down.²

Racial and ethnic gaps remain substantial. Census-based data through 2023 shows 68.5% of White workers participated in a retirement plan, compared to 56.5% of Black workers and 41.8% of Hispanic workers. Those gaps have narrowed slightly in recent years but still reflect differences in the industries, employers, and job types where different groups are concentrated. Higher education levels correlate strongly with participation, driven mostly by the reality that college graduates disproportionately land at large employers that sponsor plans.

What Participants Actually Have Saved

Participation counts tell you how many people are in the game. Balances tell you what being in has produced. At the end of 2024, Fidelity reported an average 401(k) balance of roughly $148,153 across its plans. The median was $38,176.⁶ A small number of high-balance accounts pulls the average well above what the typical worker has.

Balances grow with age and tenure. Workers 25 to 34 had an average balance of about $42,640 and a median of $16,255. Workers 55 to 64 approaching retirement had an average of $271,320 and a median of $95,642.⁶ Financial planners generally suggest aiming for six to eight times your annual salary by that age.

Contribution rates help explain the gap between the goal and the reality. The average employee contributes 7.7% of pay, and the average employer match adds 4.6%, producing a combined savings rate of about 12.0%.² Most guidance targets 12% to 15%, so the average worker sits at the low end before you account for everyone contributing nothing. Only about 14% of participants hit the IRS annual maximum.

What to Do If You Don’t Have a 401(k)

If your employer doesn’t sponsor a plan, you still have options. Workers not covered by a workplace plan can open a traditional IRA and deduct the full contribution regardless of income. For 2026, the IRA contribution limit is $7,500, or $8,600 if you’re 50 or older.⁷ A Roth IRA works if you meet the income limits, trading the current deduction for tax-free withdrawals later.

If you live in one of the 17 states running an active auto-IRA program, your employer may already be required to enroll you in a state-facilitated IRA through payroll deduction even without their own plan.⁴ Contribution limits follow IRA rules rather than the higher 401(k) ceiling, but the enrollment happens automatically.

When you leave a job where you did have a 401(k), you have four choices: leave the money in your former employer’s plan, roll it into a new employer’s plan, roll it into an IRA, or cash it out. Cashing out is almost always the worst move, since you’ll owe income tax and, if you’re under 59½, a 10% early withdrawal penalty. A direct rollover (funds moving straight from one custodian to another) avoids the mandatory 20% federal tax withholding that applies when the check is made payable to you.⁸ If you take an indirect rollover, you have 60 days to deposit the funds into a qualifying account before the distribution becomes taxable.

1
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retirement Benefits Access Participation and Take-Up Rates
2
Vanguard. How America Saves 2025
3
Vanguard. SECURE 2.0 Act Long-Term Part-Time Employee Provision
4
Georgetown Center for Retirement Initiatives. States
5
Congress.gov. SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022
6
Fidelity. Average Retirement Savings by Age
7
Internal Revenue Service. 401(k) Limit Increases to $24,500 for 2026, IRA Limit Increases to $7,500
8
Internal Revenue Service. Rollovers of Retirement Plan and IRA Distributions