The 401(k) matches that put in the most

Employer dollars = the salary, times the share of pay the employer adds under the filed formula. Every employer is computed at the same $49,500, the US median annual wage for all occupations, so no figure here depends on a salary we picked to flatter a particular employer. A reader on twice that wage doubles every figure in the table.

A formula in tiers is added tier by tier: each match rate times the band of pay it applies to. A filing that states several rates a worker gets one of, set by tenure or by which other plan the worker is in, is read at its highest rate instead, because the rates are alternatives and nobody collects them all; those rows join the rates with an “or”. A formula that caps the match in dollars uses the cap, because the cap does not move with salary. A contribution the employer makes whether or not the worker contributes counts too, and the row says so, since it is money that lands in the same account.

Dollars rather than a percentage, because a percentage hides the shape of a formula. Dollar for dollar on the first 4% of pay and 50 cents on the first 8% both read as “4%” and pay the same money. John Deere’s formula reads as neither and pays more than both.

How the scorecard is computed states the rule for every formula shape, including the ones that yield no figure at all.

Ranked by dollars a year at $49,500. Equal figures share a rank, so the table ends at rank 17 on $2,970. The vesting score beside each figure says how fast that money becomes the worker’s, and nothing else; 48 of these 50 filings state a schedule it can read, and the rest say so rather than carry a guess.

34 of the employers on this site have no figure here at all. Their filings set the rate at the company’s discretion each year without stating the rate used, or leave it to collective-bargaining agreements, or disclose one part of the formula and not the other. Each of those pages says which it is. None of them is given a number so it can appear in a table.

2 rows above carry the words “partly disclosed” under the employer name. For those, the figure is the most the filing states rather than the rate every worker gets, and the company page prints the same caveat next to the same number.

A large employer contribution is not the same as a large amount of money in hand. It arrives on the employer’s terms: a waiting period before it starts, a vesting schedule before it is yours, and fees taken out of the account while it sits there. Those are the other three figures on every company page.

• All the rankings, and what they are computed from

  319 employers read from Form 11-K filings, at one salary of $49,500.

• Whose 401(k) match becomes yours soonest

  167 of 309 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 $3,465 a year, across 17 industries.