Top 10 Industries by Retirement Plan Assets
DOL Form 5500 data ranking industries by total assets held in ERISA-regulated retirement plans. Refreshed with each dataset update.
Research period:
Research question
Across the 21 industry categories tracked in PlainRetire's Form 5500 database, which industries concentrate the largest absolute volume of retirement plan assets, and how does asset concentration align with total plan participant counts in each industry?
Methodology
This ranking reflects the data currently in our database, sourced from the agency referenced in the citation below and updated automatically as new filings are processed.
Coverage and exclusions: the source agency occasionally suppresses values for confidentiality, small sample size, or quality control, and suppressed rows are excluded from this ranking rather than shown as zero. If the agency later revises a figure, the revised value replaces the old one automatically the next time our data is refreshed.
Data provenance: we pull each release as it becomes available and normalize it into our database; a later release simply supersedes the one before it, so readers never see a mix of old and new figures on the same page.
Comparability across years: when the source agency revises its release schedule, definitions, or coverage, we note the affected years on the methodology page so readers can compare like-with-like rather than across a changed measurement.
Editorial governance: a named editor reviews every ranking page before publication (see the byline above). If an entity disputes a figure attributed to it, corrections are checked against the official source record before any change is made.
Every number on this page can be traced back to its source by following the entity links and the citation below, so independent verification never requires anything beyond the original public source.
See the methodology page for the complete data-update process, source vintage, and field definitions.
Top 10 Industries by Retirement Plan Assets
Live data: reflects the current dataset
The ranked top 10
Every row below reflects the current 10-record dataset. Reload the page after new data is processed to see the latest values.
| # | Industry | Total plan assets | Total participants | Plans | 401(k) plans |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manufacturing | $3017.08 billion | 13,399,641 | 17,599 | 14,227 |
| 2 | Finance & Insurance | $1442.35 billion | 7,397,233 | 8,569 | 6,705 |
| 3 | Professional & Technical Services | $1345.60 billion | 9,777,762 | 20,409 | 16,407 |
| 4 | Healthcare & Social Assistance | $1243.99 billion | 14,518,037 | 16,498 | 10,330 |
| 5 | Information & Media | $644.18 billion | 3,009,329 | 2,823 | 2,387 |
| 6 | Construction | $595.95 billion | 4,730,289 | 8,704 | 5,720 |
| 7 | Transportation & Warehousing | $554.93 billion | 4,217,936 | 3,295 | 2,698 |
| 8 | Retail Trade | $540.68 billion | 12,003,435 | 8,153 | 6,481 |
| 9 | Management of Enterprises | $414.04 billion | 1,702,296 | 1,133 | 880 |
| 10 | Utilities | $409.88 billion | 1,154,425 | 749 | 515 |
Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration, Form 5500 Annual Return/Report Datasets. Values reflect the current dataset, refreshed as new filings are processed. U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration, Form 5500 Annual Return/Report Datasets. Values reflect the current dataset, refreshed as new filings are processed.
Findings
Top entity in the ranking
The top-ranked record in this dataset is Manufacturing, with a value of $3017.08 billion on the Total plan assets column. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. Every value comes directly from the current dataset; no number is hardcoded into this page. When the U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.
Distribution shape
The gap between the top-ranked record ($3017.08 billion) and the 10th-ranked record ($409.88 billion) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.
Aggregate context
Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.
Source provenance
The records in this ranking originate from U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration, specifically the Form 5500 Annual Return/Report Datasets. PlainRetire ingests the source vintage published by the agency and keeps this page current, there is no static export carrying stale numbers, and a newly published dataset is reflected here within hours. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and the steps applied to prepare the data.
Why this ranking matters
Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.
What this analysis cannot tell us
Industry classification in Form 5500 filings comes from the plan sponsor's self-reported NAICS business code. Multi-industry holding companies file under a single NAICS code, which can concentrate assets in a single industry category that mask the underlying diversity of the sponsor's operations. Asset totals aggregate defined contribution plan balances and defined benefit plan trust assets; in defined contribution plans, the assets are held in individual participant accounts and reflect both employer and employee contributions plus investment returns. Industries with long-tenured workforces (manufacturing, government-adjacent, finance) accumulate more plan assets per active participant than industries with younger workforces or higher turnover. Industry-level rankings should be read as 'where retirement assets are concentrated' rather than as a measure of per-employee retirement readiness.
Secondary cut from the same source
Top 10 industries ranked by total retirement plan participant count
Sources
- DOL Form 5500, Industry NAICS code mapping - https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ebsa/about-ebsa/our-activities/public-disclosure/foia/form-5500-datasets