For the people who looked at the headline and said, “What pension?” this post is not for you. However, there are some of you pros out there whose companies still maintain defined benefit plans, and new stats from the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans show that 73% of multiemployer pension plans report they are less than 80% funded.
This bit of news makes me cringe because, as you know, PPA requires multiemployer DB plans to certify their funding status each year. A plan meets “safe” status (aka, in the green zone) if it’s at least 80% funded. Plans less than 65% funded are deemed critical (red zone), and endangered (yellow zone) or seriously endangered (orange zone) plans fall somewhere in the middle.
