"The plan year represented by this data is not like other years." So opens the sixth annual 401(k) Benchmark Report, compiled by the research team at Judy Diamond Associates. Eric Ryles, vice president of the ALM Global-affiliated group, a sister unit of BenefitsPRO, provides an analysis of the several ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc in the 401(k) space during 2020, including a slowdown in growth of plan assets and contributions compared to the prior year. Total plan assets grew from $6.0 to $6.8 trillion in 2020, a 13% increase compared to the 20% growth seen in 2019, according to the report. Significantly, employer contributions, which had been growing steadily, took a huge hit as companies either reduced or suspended their 401(k) matches. "To be clear, total employer contributions did grow slightly, from about $150 billion to $152 billion," Ryles writes, "but this is only a 1.7% increase compared to the 7.2% increase from 2018-2019." By contrast, median employee contributions per participant increased by 7.8%, a jump Ryles says is the biggest they've seen since they started keeping track of that particular metric. As counterintuitive as that may seem, he writes, "your inner economist will arrive at the truth," which is that even though lower-income workers who regularly contribute smaller amounts were unable to do so during the pandemic, higher-income workers continued to contribute their usual larger amounts, thus driving up the median contribution. "It is worth stressing here that the numbers themselves are still moving in the right directions, increasing year over year rather than decreasing," the report states. "It is the rate of that increase which has slowed dramatically." See our slideshow above for the top 10 industries with the best 401(k) performances in 2020, and click here for the full report.