EIG puts the coverage gap at 76.2 million workers

About 76.2 million U.S. workers have no employer-sponsored retirement plan available to them, per the Economic Innovation Group's updated analysis reported by PLANADVISER. Roughly 61 million of them are employed by an organization and 15 million are self-employed, and that division matters more than the total, because the larger group's coverage runs through an employer that plan rules can reach and the smaller group's does not.

The access gap lands unevenly across the economy: in the private sector, where most Americans work, 49.1% of workers lacked a plan. Part-time private-sector employees fared worst, with 77% lacking access against 42% of full-time workers. Government workers had broader access, but 30.2% still lacked a plan—a group concentrated in state and local positions and skewed younger, lower-paid and part-time.

EIG's sharper finding concerns the money: drawing on the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation, it estimates that only 37% of workers received an employer contribution or match in 2025. Among those who did, the median annual amount was about $3,000 while the average across sectors was about $5,800—a spread that implies the largest employer contributions sit well above the typical match and are pulling the mean away from the median.

Income separates workers more than demography does, according to EIG: disparities in access ran wider by earnings than by race, ethnicity or education. Among private-sector employees in the bottom tenth of household income, 88% lacked access, 91% did not participate and 91% received no employer match; in the top tenth, 14% lacked access, 18% did not participate and 24% had a plan offering no match.

Those bottom-decile figures are why the coverage count is a limited policy guide: nine in ten of the lowest earners neither have a plan nor use one, and EIG attributes the non-participation to household financial constraints rather than to plan availability, putting employer money—not the missing payroll slot—at the center of the problem. The $3,000 median against the $5,800 average says most matching dollars already land above the middle of the distribution, so a push aimed at coverage counts leaves the population those statistics describe roughly where it found them. The regulatory agenda has been pointed elsewhere: as we covered, Treasury and IRS have proposed electronic-first rollover standards under SECURE 2.0, a fix to the plumbing of plans that workers already have.

The 37% match rate is the one number a sponsor can move without waiting on a statute, and on this evidence it is moving least where access is thinnest.