Form 5500 ranking
Top States by Total Retirement Assets
States ranked by aggregate retirement plan assets held by plans headquartered in the state. According to the U.S. Department of Labor's 2024 Form 5500 filings.
Data updated 2026-08-25
- $1.3T
- #1 State
- 51
- Ranked
- $12.3T
- Combined total assets
California leads at $1.3T
According to the U.S. Department of Labor's 2024 Form 5500 filings, this ranking covers the top 51 states by total assets. California leads at $1.3T; the full list totals $12.3T combined.
- $12.3T combined across 51
- 51 states ranked
The ranking in one line
California leads with $1.3T in total assets; the 51 states ranked here hold $12.3T.
- $1.3T
- #1 - California
- 51
- states ranked
- $12.3T
- combined total assets
Context
What This Ranking Tells Us
These rankings show aggregate retirement plan assets by state of the plan sponsor's headquarters. New York, California, and Illinois typically lead due to concentrations of large financial institutions, Fortune 500 companies, and major employers. The ranking reflects where companies are headquartered, not where participants live, a plan headquartered in New York may serve employees across all 50 states. States with diversified economies and high concentrations of large employers tend to rank highest.
Methodology
How to Read the Top States by Total Retirement Assets Ranking
This page ranks 51 state records by total assets, from California at the top ($1.3T) through South Dakota at #51 ($8.4B). The underlying dataset is drawn from the Department of Labor, Form 5500 Annual Return/Report 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.
These rankings show aggregate retirement plan assets by state of the plan sponsor's headquarters. New York, California, and Illinois typically lead due to concentrations of large financial institutions, Fortune 500 companies, and major employers. The ranking reflects where companies are headquartered, not where participants live, a plan headquartered in New York may serve employees across all 50 states. States with diversified economies and high concentrations of large employers tend to rank highest.
Rankings based on a single metric can be misleading in isolation - "Total Assets" 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 #51 cutoff sits in this top-51 ranking
Total Assets spread across the displayed entries only; it does not represent the full Form 5500 corpus.
$8,419,177,683 2nd percentile higher than 2% of 51 entries in this top-51 ranking
Dashed line + filled bar = this entry, among entries in this top-51 ranking.
Source Department of Labor, Form 5500 Annual Return/Report · plan year 2024
Source: Department of Labor, Form 5500 Annual Return/Report.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Does this mean workers in top states have more retirement savings?
Not directly. These figures reflect where plan sponsors (employers) are headquartered, not where participants live. A plan headquartered in Delaware may serve employees nationwide. Per-capita retirement savings would be a better measure of individual worker preparedness, but that data is harder to calculate from Form 5500 filings.
Why do some smaller states rank high?
States like Delaware, Connecticut, and New Jersey rank disproportionately high because many corporations are incorporated there (Delaware) or have headquarters in the financial corridor (Connecticut, New Jersey). Their plan assets reflect corporate presence rather than population size.
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.
- California leads this ranking at $1.3T, see its full Form 5500 profile. View state 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. 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.