401(k) plans by industry
The median 401(k) plan at hotels and restaurants paid $54.65 per participant per year in plan-paid administrative fees; in construction the median is $166.95. Computed from 57,824 Form 5500 filings, form year 2024.
Industry comes from the IRS business code on each plan’s own Form 5500, and every figure is computed from DOL EFAST2 bulk data, not from surveys. All 57,824 large plans in the form-year-2024 data are read here, so the plan counts below are whole industries and not a sample of them. Each median is narrower than the count beside it: it reads only the plans in its own row whose filing reports a plan-paid administrative cost, because a filing that reports none has no cost to rank, and the table prints both counts. Large plans only: a plan with fewer than 100 participants files a shorter form and is not in this data, so these are not medians for US 401(k) plans generally.
What does the median 401(k) plan pay in each industry?
How industries are assigned
Every Form 5500 carries a six-digit IRS principal business activity code chosen by the sponsor (the same code list used on corporate tax returns, following the NAICS sector structure). We group those codes into the industries above; each industry page lists the exact code ranges it covers. Fees are Schedule H plan-paid administrative expenses divided by beginning-of-year participants; the median counts only plans where that figure is positive and computable.
An industry with fewer than 15 plans in this data gets no page of its own, and its plans are still counted in the overall median. 80 published plans carry a business code outside the IRS list and are counted in the overall median only. Plan-paid expenses only: fund expense ratios and employer-paid bills never appear in Schedule H, so every median is a floor, not the all-in cost. Median fees by plan size · Full methodology
Source dataset last refreshed July 28, 2026.
Cite this page
401(k) Monitor, “Median plan-paid 401(k) administrative cost per participant by industry”, computed from DOL EFAST2 Form 5500 bulk data, form year 2024.
