PensionsDecember 31, 2025

Public Pension Benefits Tumbled More Than $140,000 in Last 18 Years, per Equable Institute

The institution’s report attributed the sharp decline to policy changes following the Great Recession.

Reported by Michael Katz

The expected lifetime value of retirement benefits for public employees has dropped by more than $140,000 over the 18 years from 2006 to 2024, according to a report from the Equable Institute, representing a drop of about 10%. The organization attributed the sharp decline to post-Great Recession policy changes, such as higher retirement ages, longer vesting periods and reduced cost-of-living adjustments.

The report identified public employee retirement benefit values as roughly stable from 1966 to 2010, valued between $1.4 million and $1.45 million. Since then, however, those values have fallen to about $1.3 million, bottoming out at $1.28 million in 2022. All figures were examined in 2025 dollars.

“Far too many public employees are not actually on a path to financial stability in their later years,” Jonathan Moody, Equable’s head of research and co-author of the report, said in a statement. “When millions of Americans are struggling to keep up with the cost of living, ensuring that public workers have reliable and adequate retirement benefits is not just a workforce issue, it’s a cornerstone of long-term economic security and affordability.”

Equable’s report covered more than 1,900 U.S. public retirement plans, including nearly 1,250 legacy plans—those with active employees but closed to new members. The report found that although full-career public workers are receiving adequate retirement income, the same cannot be said of public pension participants who leave the public sector having worked less than a full career.

Equable classified full-career public sector employees as those who work and participate in the same retirement plan for at least 20 years. Medium-term workers work for a public sector employer and are members of the same retirement plan for 10 to 20 years of service, while short-term workers are in the same retirement plan for 10 years or fewer.

According to the report, 46.6% of all public sector workers were “served well” by their retirement plans. For full-career workers, this figure was 76%, while only 17.2% of short-term workers were likely to accumulate “meaningful benefits,” according to Equable.

The report was particularly critical of legacy plans, none of which, it stated, provide sufficient benefits for short- and medium-term workers. It noted that unlike legacy plans, many retirement plans created within the last 10 to 15 years have higher degrees of portability, such as hybrid plans and defined contribution plans, as well as higher member contribution rates. According to Equable, this “creates a forced savings mechanism” that increases the value of accumulated retirement savings for those who leave a job without drawing a pension.

“Retirement security can’t be separated from the broader affordability crisis facing American households,” Equable Institute Executive Director Anthony Randazzo said. “When the cost of housing, healthcare, childcare, and everyday essentials continues to rise faster than wages, workers rely even more on the promise of stable income in retirement.”