Public Employee Pension Plans (United States)

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This article is about pension systems offered to employees of all levels of government in the United States. It is not about non-pension forms of retirement systems such as defined contribution.


Public sector pensions are offered in the United States by federal, state and local levels of government. They are available to most, but not all, public sector employees. Requirements for some minimum time on the job prior to vesting typically delays pension availability to new employees until after some specified term of service is completed. Some local governments do not offer pensions at all, but may offer other sorts of retirement plans such as a defined contribution retirement plan.

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[edit] History of Public Employee Pension Plans in the United States

Public pensions got their start with various 'promises', informal and legislated, made to veterans of the Revolutionary War and, more extensively, the Civil War. They were expanded greatly, and began to be offered by a number of state and local governments during the early Progressive Era in the late nineteenth century.

Federal civilian pensions were offered under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), formed in 1920. CSRS provided retirement, disability and survivor benefits for most civilian employees in the US Federal government, until the creation of a new Federal agency, the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), in 1987.

[edit] Federal-level Pension Systems

[edit] State Public Pension Systems

Each of the 50 US states has a retirement system for their employees. There are 3.68 million full-time and 1.39 million part-time state-level-government civilian employees as of 2002. [2]

[edit] US Local Government Pension Systems

See Local government in the United States for a more complete description of the 87000+ entities that make up the local level of government in the US.

Many US cities are allowed to participate in the pension plans of their state. Some of the largest US cities have their own pension plan. The total number of local government employees in the United States as of 2002 is 13.2 million. There are 10.15 million full-time and 3.13 million part-time local-government civilian employees as of 2002. [4]

[edit] See also

[edit] External References

[edit] State Links

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