Methodology & Data Sources

Primary Data Sources

PlainRetire combines federal retirement-plan datasets and the standards bodies that govern them:

Form 5500 Filing Process

Every ERISA-covered private retirement plan in the United States must file an annual Form 5500 with the Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), with parallel filing to the Internal Revenue Service and (for defined-benefit plans) the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The form discloses the plan's sponsor, participants, assets, financial activity, and operational compliance during the reported plan year.

Three filing variants exist depending on plan size and type:

  • Form 5500 - large plans (100+ participants at the start of the plan year). Includes Schedule H (financial information for large plans), Schedule SB or MB (defined-benefit actuarial information), Schedule R (retirement plan information), and Schedule C (service provider compensation).
  • Form 5500-SF - short form for small plans (fewer than 100 participants) that meet specific eligibility criteria (no employer securities, fully invested in eligible plan assets).
  • Form 5500-EZ - one-participant plans (Solo 401(k), individually held). Filed only with the IRS, not publicly disclosed by DOL.

Filings are due seven months after the close of the plan year. A plan with a calendar plan year ending December 31, 2024 must file Form 5500 by July 31, 2025 (with a one-time 2.5-month extension available via Form 5558, pushing the deadline to October 15, 2025). PlainRetire's 2024 plan-year dataset reflects filings received and posted by DOL EBSA through the close of the 2025 filing cycle.

What We Present

PlainRetire makes Form 5500 plan-level data freely accessible with breakdowns by:

  • Plan type: 401(k), defined benefit (pension), profit-sharing, ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan), money purchase, target benefit, 403(b), 457(b)
  • Sponsor industry: NAICS-coded sector classification (Manufacturing, Healthcare, Finance, Professional Services, Construction, etc.)
  • State / region: Sponsor business address state, useful for state-level plan landscape comparison
  • Plan size: Participant-count buckets (1–25, 26–100, 101–500, 501–2,500, 2,501–10,000, 10,000+) and asset-size buckets ($<1M, $1M–$10M, $10M–$100M, $100M–$1B, $1B+)
  • Plan year: Currently 2024 plan year (most recent year with complete asset-reporting coverage), with 2022 and 2023 comparison data on sponsor history pages
  • Sponsor identity: EIN-based plan history showing all plans and plan years filed by the same sponsor

For each plan we display: sponsor name and EIN, plan name and three-digit plan number, plan type label, plan effective date, total assets at beginning and end of plan year (Schedule H lines 1f and 1l), net assets (Schedule H line 1f minus liabilities), net income for the period, participant counts (active + retired + separated-vested), and filing status. Where the plan filed Schedule H or Schedule I, the underlying line items are the same data fields cited by ERISA Section 103 reporting requirements.

Worked Example, Boeing 401(k)

To illustrate how PlainRetire transforms raw Form 5500 data into the displayed numbers, consider The Boeing Company 401(k) Retirement Plan (EIN 91-0425694, plan number 002, plan year 2024). The Form 5500 filing reports Schedule H Line 1l (total assets at end of plan year) of approximately $73.9 billion across roughly 139,394 active and separated-vested participants. PlainRetire's plan-detail page shows that asset total in the "Total Assets (End of Year)" KPI tile by reading the corresponding column from our normalized DOL EBSA dataset; "Net Income" is read from Schedule H Line 2k. Year-over-year asset change is computed as (eoy_assets - boy_assets) / boy_assets from Schedule H Lines 1f (beginning) and 1l (end). Participant count comes from Schedule H Part II header. No figures are estimated, fabricated, or modified, only direct field reads and basic arithmetic on those fields.

Standards Bodies & References

Beyond the raw filings, retirement-plan data is governed by a stack of federal statute, IRS regulation, and accounting standards. PlainRetire references the following throughout site content:

  • ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974) - federal law establishing fiduciary, disclosure, and reporting requirements for private retirement plans. Source for the "ERISA-covered" plan scope used on PlainRetire.
  • Internal Revenue Code §401(k), §403(b), §408 - sections governing salary-deferral plans, tax-sheltered annuity plans, and IRA contribution rules respectively. Annual contribution limits ($23,000 elective deferral for 401(k) in 2024, rising to $23,500 in 2025 and $24,500 in 2026; $8,000 standard catch-up at 50+ for 2026) flow from §415(c) cost-of-living adjustments published annually by the IRS.
  • SECURE Act 2.0 (2023) - significant retirement-plan reform raising RMD age (73 for those born 1951–1959; 75 for those born 1960 or later), expanding catch-up contributions for ages 60–63 ($11,250 starting 2025), and creating Roth Simple-IRA + Roth-SEP options.
  • FASB ASC 715 (Compensation, Retirement Benefits) - accounting standard governing employer recognition of pension and other postretirement benefit obligations on financial statements. Underlies the "net periodic benefit cost" disclosures large defined-benefit plans cite to financial-statement preparers.
  • SSA Publication 05-10024 (Retirement Benefits) - the canonical SSA primer on Social Security claiming ages, full retirement age tables (FRA 67 for those born 1960+), delayed retirement credits, and earnings test rules.
  • RBD (Required Beginning Date) and RMD (Required Minimum Distribution) - Treasury regulations under IRC §401(a)(9) and Pub 590-B specifying when distributions must begin and how the annual minimum is calculated using the Uniform Lifetime Table.

Data Vintage

PlainRetire currently displays data from the 2024 plan year, the most recent year with complete asset-reporting coverage (filings due July 31, 2025 with extension through October 15, 2025). We refresh the dataset when DOL EBSA publishes the next annual abstract, typically in the first half of the following calendar year.

Processing Pipeline

We ingest Form 5500 plan-year zip releases directly from the DOL EBSA public-disclosure portal, normalize the resulting tabular feeds (plan registration, Schedule H/I/SB/MB/R), join sponsor records by EIN to assemble a plan-level view, and load the result into a queryable SQLite store served from a single ERISA dataset node per plan year. Steps include:

  • Download Form 5500 plan-year zip releases for plan years 2022, 2023, and 2024 from DOL EBSA's public-disclosure portal
  • Extract sponsor (EIN, name, business address state) + plan registration (plan name, plan number, plan type code, effective date, filing status) tables
  • Join Schedule H (financial info, large plans) and Schedule I (financial info, small plans) on plan_id + plan_year for total/net asset and net-income fields
  • Map plan-type codes (e.g., 2A = profit sharing, 2C = money purchase, 2D = ESOP, 2J = 401(k)) to display labels using the DOL plan-type taxonomy
  • Compute size buckets, industry rollups (NAICS), state aggregates, and YoY asset change for sponsor-history views
  • Index by sponsor EIN, state, plan type, and total assets for fast lookup and ranking

No financial figures are fabricated, estimated, or smoothed. All asset, participant, and net-income values come directly from the DOL Schedule H/I rows. Where we compute derived metrics (size buckets, percent-of-state, asset-growth percentages), the calculations are straightforward arithmetic applied to the source rows.

Limitations

  • Form 5500 data covers ERISA-private plans only. Government plans (federal, state, and local pensions, including PERA-style state systems) are exempt from ERISA reporting and are NOT in this dataset.
  • Form 5500-EZ filings (one-participant Solo 401(k) plans) go directly to the IRS, are not publicly disclosed by DOL, and are excluded.
  • Filings are self-reported by plan sponsors and their administrators. EBSA does not audit individual filings; data quality reflects the diligence of the filer, with notable variation in field completeness across small-plan and large-plan filings.
  • "Net Income" on Schedule H Line 2k aggregates investment performance, contributions received, and benefit/distribution flows during the period. A single-year figure does not by itself indicate plan health; cross-year comparison and context (market conditions, plan mergers, workforce changes) is essential.
  • Participant counts mix active workers, retirees receiving payments, and separated-vested former employees who left funds in the plan. The "covered population" interpretation depends on the question being asked.
  • Plan asset valuations follow the plan's own accounting basis (typically fair value at plan year-end) and do not always align with sponsor financial-statement disclosures under FASB ASC 715.

Editorial Pipeline

PlainRetire is produced by our editorial team. Data tables and KPI values are generated directly from the underlying DOL EBSA filings, the numbers you see are read straight from the source data, not retyped. The individual plan pages assemble those figures with templated descriptions built from the filing's own fields, so they scale to every plan in the dataset. The hand-written material, the guides, this methodology, and the data framing, is drafted and edited in-house by the editorial team, who also design the templates, run data-quality checks across the dataset, and own corrections. Every quantitative claim traces back to a primary filing in EBSA EFAST2.

Not Affiliated

PlainRetire is not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, or any other government agency. This site is for informational purposes only and does not provide retirement, tax, fiduciary, or financial advice. Plan-level facts shown here are drawn from public Form 5500 filings; for decisions about your own retirement benefits or any specific plan, consult the plan's Summary Plan Description, the plan administrator, or a qualified financial professional.