What are the biggest companies that offer pensions? A typical person will spend more than three-quarters of their life working. On the other hand, some choose to start their businesses. According to a report by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the United States has close to 27 million entrepreneurs. The 2010 US Census data shows that the population of the working-age Americans was about 244 million at the time of the census. As such, only close to 14% of working-age Americans are working on their businesses.
From the foregoing, it is evident that more than 86% of working-age Americans are in employment. However, not all companies that these people work to offer a retirement plan. In the present employment environment, fewer employees stay loyal to a single company for long. Subsequently, companies seem to have given up trying to entice employees with pension schemes. Besides, many companies today are concerned more about operational and labor costs to increase profit margins. Therefore, such companies would rather not pay any pensions to their workforce.
Nevertheless, it is not all gloom for employees. There are still companies that believe in an organized retirement life for their workforce. Some of them are big multinational companies that are raking in immense amounts of profits annually. This article will rank the ten biggest companies that offer pensions in the United States.
Investors should consider the long-term implications of offering a defined benefit retirement plan as medical advances continuously extend the human life span. One of the reasons why old industrial behemoths like General Electric (NYSE:GE) is failing is that GE’s current total pension obligations is around $92 billion. Little things add up.
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As the methodology of this research on other big companies that offer pensions, we searched for companies that offer a defined-benefit retirement plan. Further, we looked at the size of the defined benefit assets for each of the companies for the year 2016. In the ranking, the first company had the largest size of defined benefit assets while the last company has the smallest among the ranked companies. We compiled data from a combination of SEC filings and quarterly financial reports.
- Dominion Energy Inc. (NYSE:D)
Dominion Energy offers a comprehensive retirement plan that incorporates two different designs. On the one hand, the company offers a traditional pension design where benefits are calculated based on average and service earnings. On the other hand, the cash-balance pension design is strictly based on the years of the employee’s service. This makes Dominion Energy one of the biggest companies that offer pensions. The company had $6.43 billion in total defined benefits assets in 2016.
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