Trump touts forthcoming proposal for workers who don’t have a 401(k)

President Donald Trump recently touted a proposal to give private-sector workers access to a retirement savings plan if they don’t already receive one from their employer.

He spoke about the proposal during the Feb. 24 State of the Union address before Congress. Starting next year, Americans who don’t have an employer-sponsored retirement plan with matching contributions will have “access to the same type of retirement plan offered to every federal worker. We will match your contribution with up to $1,000 each year, as we ensure that all Americans can profit from a rising stock market,” Trump said.

How Trump’s proposal might work. Lawmakers from both parties have already expressed support for extending Thrift Savings Plans—defined contribution retirement plans available to federal employees—to workers in the private sector. Kevin Hassett, who currently serves as National Economic Council Director, co-authored an op-ed advocating for this solution in March 2021, when Joe Biden was president. And a bipartisan group of lawmakers reintroduced a bill to this end in May 2025.

Even if Trump’s proposal doesn’t manage to clear passage in Congress, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested in an interview with NBC that the White House could push it through via budget reconciliation, which allows lawmakers to fast-track certain high-priority fiscal legislation. Bessent told NBC’s Kristen Welker that the White House would unveil the policy proposal “in the coming weeks and months.”

Room for improvement. The president often references the stock market and Americans’ rising 401(k) balances as a sign of the US economy’s strength.

But as Trump noted in his address, many Americans still don’t have access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan such as a 401(k). Forty-two percent of full-time working Americans in the private sector didn’t have access to a retirement plan as of 2024, while more than half (50.5%) didn’t receive an employer match, according to an analysis of federal data from the Economic Innovation Group.

At the same time, the Social Security Administration is expected to run out of enough money to fully fund retirement benefits by 2034, putting more pressure on employers to fill in gaps where government assistance may be inadequate.

Retirement benefits are less prevalent among small employers with fewer than 100 workers, and Trump’s proposal could certainly alleviate pressure on HR teams at these organizations to invest in such plans. But recent data from HR software company Gusto indicates that retirement plan adoption at small businesses has nevertheless grown in recent years. Thirty percent of businesses with 2–99 employees in Gusto’s network had active retirement plans as of 2025, up from 19% in 2019.