Whose 401(k) match becomes yours soonest

The three shapes are not points on one scale, so they are three tables. Immediate vesting comes first because there is nothing to wait for. A graded schedule pays out in steps, so leaving early costs the unvested share. A cliff pays nothing until one date, so leaving the day before it costs everything the employer has put in.

Within the graded and cliff tables the order is the vesting score: the average share of the employer’s money that is the worker’s at hire and at each of the first 6 anniversaries. 6 years is the measuring window because it is the longest graded schedule the law allows for a match, so no lawful schedule is cut off by it.

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. An employer at the top of the immediate table can still put in less money than one near the bottom of the cliff table, which is why the dollar figure sits in the last column of every table below.

How the scorecard is computed gives the arithmetic and a worked example.

Every matched dollar belongs to the worker the day it is paid in. Leaving the job the following week costs none of it.

167 employers. Every schedule in this group vests at the same speed, so the rows are ordered by what the employer puts in.

A share vests at each anniversary until the schedule reaches 100%. Leaving early costs the unvested share, not all of it.

54 employers. Ordered by the vesting score, which is the average share of the employer's money that is the worker's at hire and at each of the first six anniversaries.

None of the employer's money is the worker's until the cliff date, and all of it is on that date. Leaving the day before costs every matched dollar.

88 employers. Ordered by the cliff, shortest first, then by what the employer puts in.

10 employers on this site are not in any table above, because their filing does not state a schedule this can read. They are counted rather than guessed at:

• 5The filing does not state a vesting schedule for the employer match.
• 3The filing states a graded schedule but not the years and percentages that make it up.
• 1The filing states the vesting schedule in quarters, and this score reads a schedule at whole-year anniversaries.
• 1The filing states a cliff but not how many years it runs.

A schedule stated in quarters is left out for a reason worth naming: reading it at whole-year anniversaries would mean inventing the steps in between, and an invented step would move a rank.

• All the rankings, and what they are computed from

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

• Which employers put the most into a 401(k)

  John Deere puts in $4,950 a year. The median across 285 employers is $1,980.

• 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.