Problematic debt: Why 40% of workers can’t participate in a retirement plan

Getting employers more engaged with their retirement savings plan can be a tricky proposition, made more difficult by concerns with inflation and debt, according to experts in a recent panel discussion sponsored by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).

EBRI’s recent “2023 Retirement Confidence Survey” report said that although a majority of both workers and retirees believe their retirement savings will be sufficient for their needs, levels of confidence slipped sharply in 2023 for both groups. The EBRI survey found that confidence in retirement savings had dropped nine percentage points for workers, and four percentage points for retirees.

“The big thing that we could see is that this year we had the largest one-year drop in confidence since 2008, which is the last time we had a really large decline in the economy,” said Craig Copeland, director of wealth benefits research at EBRI. “Inflation and cost of living has been top-of-mind for [worker] confidence and their overall feeling on what’s going on in the economy.”

Not enough savings, too much debt

The survey found that for some workers, debt and an inability to save were serious problems. The data showed that 18% of workers have less than $1,000 saved towards retirement. For workers without any kind of retirement plan, 60% had less than $1,000 in retirement savings.

“The workforce still needs to do a lot more preparing for retirement, otherwise [workers] could continue to fall behind in their retirement prospects,” Copeland said. “Those that have a plan are far more likely to have saved significant amounts of money toward retirement…really, the big factor is getting people into retirement plans and getting them to build up their assets, getting that money out of the paycheck and getting it into [a retirement savings plan.]”

Related: Employee debt affects the workplace: Rolling out the right financial wellness solutions

Lisa Greenwald, CEO of Greenwald Research, said that debt is another big problem for certain segments of the workforce. “A rising proportion of workers say that debt is a major or minor problem for their households,” she said. “Two-thirds of workers say that debt is problematic for their households, and for retirees, it has remained stable, but we still see one third who say that they have problematic debt.”

The survey found that nearly half of workers said that debt also was negatively impacting their ability to save for retirement. “The debt that workers are facing is causing them to not participate or contribute to an employer-based retirement plan, at 40%, and nearly as many, 36%, said that debt is negatively impacting their ability to participate in other employee benefits,” Greenwald said.

Another finding was that credit card debt is the worst problem for employees—and a significantly bigger problem for workers than student loan debt or medical debt, the research showed.

The path forward—focus on engagement and education

The webinar concluded with panelists stressing that employee engagement can be built with education, but that changes to plans can take time to catch on with enrollees.

Jessica Sclafani, senior defined contribution strategist with T. Rowe Price, said that the research has shown that the participant experience is crucial to whether a plan can increase its appeal to employees. “The communication, engagement, and educational component, particularly for retirement plans, have to go hand in hand,” she said.

Sclafani added that when new options are added to a plan, it can take time to get buy-in from employees. “It’s a slow build,” she said. “With any new investment option in a plan, it takes time to build participant adoption.” She said plan sponsors will have to create proactive campaigns to engage plan participates. And they will need to be patient in seeing results. “You should not expect to see significant adoption one, two, even three years out,” she said. “Deciding to implement an in-plan retirement income solution is a long-term decision that cannot be measured productively over the short term.”