58 percent of private industry workers had access to medical care and retirement benefits in 2017

In March 2017, 67 percent of private industry workers had access to medical care benefits, and 66 percent had access to retirement benefits. Fifty-eight percent of workers had access to both medical care and retirement benefits, while 24 percent of workers had access to neither benefit.

Nine percent of workers had access to medical care benefits but not retirement benefits, while 8 percent had access to retirement benefits but not medical care benefits. Retirement benefits include both defined benefit plans and defined contribution plans.

These data are from the National Compensation Survey — Benefits program. To learn more, see our most recent annual bulletin on benefits. Defined benefit plans provide employees with guaranteed retirement benefits based on a formula. Defined contribution plans specify the employer contributions and place them into individual employee retirement accounts. For definitions of the terms related to employee benefits, see our glossary.