When it comes to retirement, women try harder.
That's among the findings of a study from the ADP Research Institute, which looked at the types of companies, by size and type of industry, that offer retirement benefits, as well as the retirement savings behaviors of approximately 10 million U.S. employees in 2014.
So how do women try harder? In every compensation level, the research found, more females were saving for retirement than men; they also saved at slightly higher rates—6.7 percent for men compared with 6.8 percent for women.
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The rates were so similar, the study said, "due to a higher proportion of female employees at lower compensation levels or in part-time positions that are ineligible for employer-sponsored retirement plans."
When it came to breaking down savings rates by age, the closer workers got to retirement age, the greater the participation rate in any employer-sponsored plan.
Overall participation rates rose from 41.1 percent for employees aged 20–24 years to 65.6 percent for employees aged 55 and older.
Also, the older the workers, the bigger the savings rates. That held true for both men and women, with employees aged 20–24 years deferring an average of 4.6 percent of their salary, and employees ages 55 and up deferring on average 8.5 percent of their salary.
Companies offering retirement plans vary by both size and industry, with smaller companies being considerably less likely to offer a retirement plan to their employees. Only a third of companies with less than 20 employees even have retirement plans, but 98 percent of companies with 5,000 or more employees do.
And that has to play into employees' job searches, since almost 80 percent of employees say that benefits such as a retirement plan play a key role in their decision to accept a job.
The percentage of companies offering retirement plans varies widely by industry, too:
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67.1 percent of manufacturing firms offer their employees a plan
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63 percent of information industry firms
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55.9 percent in the professional and business services industry
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52.4 percent of financial activities firms
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51.5 percent in the education and health services sectors
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23.3 percent of companies in the leisure and hospitality industry
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