401(k) rankings, computed from the filings
$2,228
Across the 192 US employers whose Form 11-K states a formula that can be computed, the employer puts in a median of $2,228 a year for a worker on $49,500 who contributes enough to collect all of it. John Deere puts in $4,950, the most of any filing we have read.
No recordkeeper can publish these numbers, because a recordkeeper sees one plan at a time. Every figure below is read across employers, from documents each of them was required to file.
The three rankings
| Ranking | Leads with | Whose figure that is | Employers |
|---|---|---|---|
| What the employer puts in | $4,950 a year | John Deere, the highest figure in the file | 192 |
| How soon the match is yours | 114 employers | vest the match the day it is paid in | 211 |
| What the median is, by industry | $3,470 a year | Oil, gas and mining, the highest median | 149 |
What they are computed from
Two figures carry every ranking, and they are not interchangeable.
The first is what the employer puts in per year, for a worker who contributes enough to collect all of it. It is a dollar amount, so it compares one employer with another without judging either. It is computed at a single salary of $49,500, the US median annual wage for all occupations, so every figure on the site is about the same worker. Every dollar figure scales with that salary: a reader on twice the wage doubles it.
The second is the vesting score out of 100: how fast the employer’s money becomes the worker’s. It is the average share of that money the worker owns at hire and at each of the first 6 anniversaries, read from the schedule in the filing. A plan whose filing states no schedule gets no score, and says so.
It measures vesting speed and nothing else. It says nothing about the size of the match, what the plan charges, or the funds inside it. It also leaves out the wait before the match starts and the year-end true-up, which the company pages print as filed terms wherever a filing states them. Those two were once inside the score, and taking them out fixed two problems at once: a score that needed all three was missing from four pages in five, and a filing that simply never mentioned a true-up was being scored as a plan without one.
How the scorecard is computed publishes the arithmetic, the six-year window and a worked example on one real plan.
What is in scope, and what is not
A Form 11-K is filed only when a retirement plan holds the employer’s own registered stock. That is what makes a match formula public in the first place, and it is also the limit of these rankings: they cover large employers with listed shares, not every employer in the country. A Form 5500 states what a plan costs and how big it is, but it states no match formula, so the wider set of plans on this site cannot be ranked on what the employer puts in.
| Employers with a Form 11-K we have read | 219 |
|---|---|
| Ranked on what the employer puts inThe other 27 file a formula that cannot be computed: set at the company's discretion each year, set by collective bargaining, or disclosed only in part. | 192 |
| Carrying a vesting score out of 100The other 8 do not state a schedule that can be read at whole-year anniversaries. | 211 |
| Stating the wait before the match startsPrinted on the company page as a filed term. It is not part of any score, so a filing that omits it still carries one. | 50 |
| Stating a true-up after year endPrinted the same way. A filing that never mentions a true-up is not a plan without one, so the other filings carry no line and lose no points. | 37 |
| Form 5500 plan records on the siteRanked on fees and size, never on match: the form does not carry a formula. | 57,824 |
How to read a rank here
A rank compares, it does not advise. “Vests faster than four in five of the plans we have read” is a statement about this file. “A good plan” is not, and nothing here says it: pay, healthcare, job security and the price of the funds inside the plan are all outside these figures, and any one of them can outweigh a match.
Ties share a rank. Two employers with the same figure carry the same number and the next rank skips, so a rank always answers how many employers sit above.
Every row links to the company page, where the same figure is shown with the sentence from the filing it was read from. Nothing here is a number you have to take on trust: the full table downloads as a CSV with every component and its points, and the scorecard methodology gives the formula behind each one.
Where to go next
- Which employers put the most into a 401(k)
John Deere puts in $4,950 a year. The median across 192 employers is $2,228.
- Whose 401(k) match becomes yours soonest
114 of 211 employers vest the match the day it is paid in.
- What a 401(k) match is worth, industry by industry
Oil, gas and mining leads on the median at $3,470 a year, across 13 industries.