Raw Data: 401(k) Account Balances for Workers Near Retirement

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Last week I put up a post showing average 401(k) retirement account balances. However, that data was for all 401(k) accounts, including young workers, and that’s obviously of limited usefulness. What we’d really like to know is the average account balance for people nearing retirement.

The chart on the right, based on data from EBRI, provides a rough idea. Very rough. First of all, it’s a mean, not a median, so it’s skewed upward by the small number of participants with very large balances. The median number is likely half the mean. Second, it includes only people who have contributed consistently to their 401(k) accounts since 1999. This also skews the number upward since it excludes people with spotty work records, who are most likely to have small balances.

So take it with a grain of salt. But it’s a data point, and I wanted to pass it along. One thing it shows clearly is the significant drop from 2007 to 2008, when workers near retirement saw their account balances fall by 25 percent in a single year. At the same time, it also shows that within a year, account balances had rebounded to within a few thousand dollars of their 2006 values, and had increased by nearly half since the start of the decade. The lesson here is that, on average, 401(k) balances have done reasonably well for people who contributed consistently, but also that they’re pretty volatile and shift a considerable amount of risk onto workers. Back in the days of defined-benefit pensions, that risk would have been borne by corporations or investment funds.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate