Here’s How to Find that Perfectly Pensionable Job

In a typical setting, jobs with conventional pension plans are structured to steadily support their former members of staff well into the later years of their career.

Usually, the policy kicks into place immediately retirees meet the bare minimums in terms of age requirements and job tenure. After that, they start receiving the stipulated monthly returns.

Data shared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that a tiny fraction of private industry workers (about 17%), were sorted out with traditional pension plans at their places of work in March 2018. While this number is quite impressive, there are very few career openings that offer traditional pension plans in contemporary times. Here’s we believe you can ensure you receive your deserved monthly checks during the retirement stage of your career.

Government Jobs

As of March 2018, about 86% of state and town government workers had a working pension plan. According to Richard Johnson, the director in charge of retirement policies at the Urban Institute, the federal government and a majority of local government setup actually provide their workers with full traditional pension packages. He also revealed that in recent times, the benefits from such schemes have continually dipped.

Johnson also shared that primary, secondary, and special education teachers were the biggest winner in the pension game since they receive a huge chunk, about 99 percent, of the traditional pension package.  Employees in the natural resources field took second fiddle with an impressive 90% return on the pension package. People working in the protective service, majorly firemen and police officers, were third in the list with an 89% takeaway.

Government workers deployed in junior colleges and universities were fourth placed with an impressive 82% pension package. Others in the list include government workers in the health care and social services departments at 68%.

At present, about 40% of local government employees are actively eligible for the traditional pension plan, provided they commit a good portion of their effort to working part-time.

Union Membership

Access to a union card could prove to be all the difference between having a retirement benefits plan and being frozen from accessing one. This is true because unions usually negotiate with management for their members to be recipients to improved benefits.

The numbers show that 68% of union members actively benefit from traditional pension plans, a considerable bump compared to the 12% from non-union workers.

Speaking to reporters, Caroline Crawford, the assistant director at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, shared that the biggest beneficiaries of the retirement plans are the state & local government workers, plus, the unionized workers involved in the private sector.

Crawford revealed that their research has conclusively determined that there exists a high concentration of workers in the transportation, service industry, construction, and manufacturing sectors of the economy. She opined that the key reasons why unions thrive todays is because they have a better bargaining power compared to individual effort.

Big Companies

Mammoth sized companies will find it feasible to provide their workers with the traditional pension plan, than other small establishments. The numbers show that firms with more than 500 workers have a 41% chance of gifting their employees with traditional pension plans. On the other hand, establishments with 100-499 workers have a diminished 19% probability of availing the traditional pension plan to their employees. In retrospect, organizations with less than 100 employees have the least chance of availing the traditional pension cover, at 7%.

Johnson mentioned that the traditional pension plan was still quite popular among large unionized employers. Small employers were the least likely to avail such services to their employees.

Ultra-Small Firms

While it’s true that small enterprises will not find it feasible to provide traditional pension plans to their staff, the ultra-small firms are quite different. Professionals like lawyers, dentists, and doctors usually band together and form closely knit societies of about 5 and provide retirement benefits to reward them for services rendered during their time of employment.

Spousal Connection

Traditional pension plans offer qualified joint and survivor annuities to married couples.

Being married to a partner who’s listed you out in their traditional pension plan can have its benefits. After they pass away, the terms dictate that the joint union benefits can kick into effect, albeit, with lower monthly returns.

The NorthEast

Unbelievably, not all regions were created equal in terms of employment opportunities. Regions in the Northeast are better placed at availing the traditional pension plan with odds coming to about 22%. In the southern and western states, the odds of accessing a pension plan is at its lowest at a lowly 15%.

Management

Managers who ply their trade in the finance and business sectors are usually best placed when it comes to remuneration and access to traditional pension plans. About 24% of employees in the private sector who are in management positions actually have a viable traditional pension plan.