Form 5500 ranking
Retirement Plans with the Biggest Participant Declines
The 50 plans with the largest year-over-year decrease in reported participants, comparing consecutive DOL Form 5500 filings for the same plan. According to the U.S. Department of Labor's 2024 Form 5500 filings.
Data updated 2026-08-25
- 84,542
- #1 Plan
- 50
- Ranked
- 880,627
- Combined participant decline
Express Employment Professionals 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan leads at 84,542
According to the U.S. Department of Labor's 2024 Form 5500 filings, this ranking covers the top 50 plans by participant decline. Express Employment Professionals 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan leads at 84,542; the full list totals 880,627 combined.
- 880,627 combined across 50
- 50 plans ranked
The ranking in one line
Express Employment Professionals 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan leads with 84,542 in participant decline; the 50 plans ranked here represent 880,627 in combined participant declines.
- 84,542
- #1 - Express Employment Professionals 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
- 50
- plans ranked
- 880,627
- combined participant decline
Context
What This Ranking Tells Us
This ranking compares the participant count reported in each plan's two most recent Form 5500 filings. It identifies the largest absolute declines among plans that previously reported at least 10,000 participants, keeping ordinary small-plan churn out of a national comparison. A lower count can reflect distributions, workforce changes, a merger, a termination, or a reporting change. It is not a judgment about plan health, benefits, or an employer's treatment of workers.
Methodology
How to Read the Retirement Plans with the Biggest Participant Declines Ranking
This page ranks 50 plan records by participant decline, from Express Employment Professionals 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan at the top (84,542) through First Student, Inc. Retirement Savings Plan at #50 (7,355). The underlying dataset is drawn from the Department of Labor, Form 5500 Annual Return/Report (two most recent plan years) for the 2024 plan year. Each ranked entry links to a detail page with the full set of Form 5500 fields, plan type, sponsor EIN, state, participants, net assets, net income, and prior-year history where available.
This ranking compares the participant count reported in each plan's two most recent Form 5500 filings. It identifies the largest absolute declines among plans that previously reported at least 10,000 participants, keeping ordinary small-plan churn out of a national comparison. A lower count can reflect distributions, workforce changes, a merger, a termination, or a reporting change. It is not a judgment about plan health, benefits, or an employer's treatment of workers.
Rankings based on a single metric can be misleading in isolation - "Participant Decline" captures one dimension of a plan's profile and does not measure participant outcomes, fees, investment options, or funding health. Year-to-year movement in this ranking reflects market performance, workforce changes, plan mergers, and filing timing as much as plan quality. This page is informational only, summarizing public DOL disclosures for research and educational purposes, and is not retirement, tax, legal, or financial advice. Before relying on any ranking to evaluate an employer's plan or make retirement decisions, verify the underlying filing on EFAST2 and consult a qualified professional.
Where the #50 cutoff sits in this top-50 ranking
Participant Decline spread across the displayed entries only; it does not represent the full Form 5500 corpus.
7,355 2nd percentile higher than 2% of 50 entries in this top-50 ranking
Dashed line + filled bar = this entry, among entries in this top-50 ranking.
Source Department of Labor, Form 5500 Annual Return/Report (two most recent plan years) · plan year 2024
Source: Department of Labor, Form 5500 Annual Return/Report (two most recent plan years).
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a participant decline mean a retirement plan is failing?
No. A lower reported count can follow retirements, benefit distributions, workforce changes, a merger, a plan termination, or a reporting revision. The filing alone does not explain which factor caused the change.
Why is there a 10,000-participant floor?
The ranking compares absolute headcount movement. Requiring a substantial prior-year count keeps a small plan's normal enrollment change from dominating a national list, while leaving smaller plans available in the full plan database.
Nearby Rankings
Other leaderboards cut from the same Form 5500 dataset, ranked by different metrics.
What to do with this ranking
Ways to act on this ranking's numbers.
- Express Employment Professionals 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan leads this ranking at 84,542, see its full Form 5500 profile. View plan profile
- Compare this ranking side-by-side against 3 other Form 5500 leaderboards. Compare rankings
- A single-metric ranking like this one doesn't measure fees, funding health, or participant outcomes, read how these rankings are built before drawing conclusions. Read the methodology
- Browse the full Form 5500 plan database to look up any individual plan by name, sponsor, or state. Browse all plans
Retirement Plans by State
See how retirement plans in this ranking break down geographically. Each state page shows plan counts, participants, and total assets for that jurisdiction.
Browse by Plan Type
Filter the retirement universe by plan structure, each type has distinct contribution rules, vesting schedules, and asset profiles.
Source: Department of Labor, Form 5500 Annual Return/Report (two most recent plan years). Rankings rebuilt from the publicly released 2024 plan-year file.
Source: DOL EFAST2 filing system (efast.dol.gov) - original Form 5500 filings retrievable by plan sponsor EIN or plan name.
Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
How Plan Rankings Are Constructed
Ranking retirement plans is more subtle than ranking, say, restaurants or stocks. A "largest" plan is unambiguous when measured by participant count or asset total, both are reported in Form 5500 and audited by an independent accountant once a plan crosses the 100-participant threshold. But a "best" plan is contextual: the right benchmark for a multi-employer pension fund is different from the right benchmark for a single-employer 401(k), and both are different from the benchmark for an ESOP. PlainRetire's ranking pages stick to clearly defined, source-derived metrics, participant counts, plan assets, net contribution, employer contribution as a share of pay, and year-over-year asset growth. Each metric has its own page so readers can decide which framing is relevant for their question.
Each ranking includes the underlying source (Form 5500 schedule and line item), the plan-year vintage, and a footnote when an aggregate excludes plans with incomplete or amended filings. Where a plan has filed multiple amendments, a sometimes-routine but sometimes-meaningful signal, the ranking uses the most recent accepted filing and notes the amendment count on the plan detail page. This approach lets readers see who is at the top of a particular ladder without conflating different scales of "size" or "growth."
Methodology and Limitations
Rankings are computed against the most recent annual dataset released by the Department of Labor. New plans, terminations, and significant amendments will not appear until the next annual release, which has roughly a seven-month publication lag from plan year end. Plans that file Form 5500-EZ (single-participant plans) are not included in the public datasets and therefore do not appear in PlainRetire rankings. International plans, government plans, and church plans (which are exempt from Title I of ERISA) are similarly outside the dataset and outside these rankings. When evaluating a ranking, consider the universe being compared: a national ranking of 401(k) sponsors will be dominated by Fortune 500 employers, while a state-level ranking will surface regionally significant plans that don't appear in the national list.
Asset and participant counts are reported by the plan sponsor and certified by an auditor for plans above 100 participants. Smaller plans rely on plan-sponsor attestation. Both are subject to standard data-quality caveats: corrections appear as amended filings in subsequent years, and PlainRetire reflects amendments as soon as DOL releases updated datasets.
Every figure on PlainRetire is rendered directly from the Department of Labor's Form 5500 annual return filings, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of 2026-08-25.