Most retirement wealth in this country sits in 401(k)s, which is fine if you have one. Half the private workforce doesn't.
A new Pew Charitable Trusts brief puts a number on it: about 56 million private-sector workers - nearly half - don't get retirement benefits through their employer.
That's the population most policy fixes are now aimed at, including the just-announced TrumpIRA.gov platform.
Pew surveyed 1,132 workers without workplace retirement plans in 2024, and one in three said they "rarely" or "never" have money left at the end of the month. Among Hispanic respondents, that climbed to 42%.
Roughly one in five said they struggle to manage debt at all - a problem that often forces folks to keep living paycheck to paycheck even when wages rise.
Despite all that, 81% said building wealth was important to them. The top reason: to live without financial worries, with retirement security coming in second.
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Seventeen states have already launched auto-IRA programs to fill the gap, with a simple setup. If your employer doesn't offer a retirement plan, the state automatically routes a slice of your paycheck into an IRA managed by a private firm.
In the ten state programs where data is public, around 1 million workers have built up about $1.9 billion in savings since 2017. Pew's research found that auto-deduction makes workers 15 times more likely to save for retirement - which is exactly why employer 401(k) plans work so well in the first place.
The federal Saver's Match goes live in 2027 and will pay eligible savers up to $1,000 a year. Combined with the new TrumpIRA.gov directory, the math on participation could shift quickly for low-income workers.
Half the private workforce has been outside the retirement system for a generation, and a match plus a directory is the closest thing to a real onramp they've been offered.
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