Number of workers on company pensions falling

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The Evening Standard
The proportion of people who belong to a company pension scheme has fallen by nearly a 10th during the past 12 years, figures showed today.

Half of British workers were members of an employer-sponsored pension scheme last year, down from 55% in 1997, according to the Office for National Statistics.

There was also a steep drop in the number of people who belonged to defined benefit schemes, with this falling from 46% to just 33% during the period.

The fall is likely to have been driven by employers closing the schemes, which have become increasingly expensive to offer, and replacing them with less generous defined contribution ones.

But there was also a slight drop in the proportion of workers who belonged to defined contribution schemes, at 6%, down from 9%.

However, this fall was partially offset by a rise in the number of people who had an employer-sponsored personal pension, such as a stakeholders scheme, with membership of these rising from 1% to 6% during the period.

It is thought that during 2008, the latest period for which figures are available, about nine million people were active members of occupational pension schemes, 3.6 million of whom belonged to private sector ones, with the remaining 5.4 million belonging to schemes provided by public sector employers.

Unsurprisingly, the lower people's weekly earnings were, the less likely they were to belong to a pension scheme, with those on higher earnings most likely to be a member of one.

People who worked for large employers and those in higher managerial posts were also most likely to belong to a company pension scheme, with two-thirds of workers in these group members of one, compared with only a fifth of people who worked in routine occupations.

Workers in their forties and fifties were most likely to have a company pension, while those aged between 16 and 21 and the over-65s were least likely to be paying into a scheme.