Industry News

Recently, the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS) released its report, Measuring the Fiscal Sustainability of Public Pensions. The updated NCPERS study examines the sustainability valuation to monitor pension plan fiscal conditions. The findings indicate that the national outlook continues to improve for public pension plan funding. The research report indicates that, “public pensions are more sustainable than they have been in over twenty years, showing significant improvements when evaluated against long-term benchmarks.”

According to the report, “public pension liabilities are fiscally sustainable relative to state and local economic capacity. The national sustainability ratio has now been below its long-run average for four consecutive years, the longest sustained period of below-benchmark sustainability since 2002–2008, and 48 of 50 states are at or below their own benchmarks as of 2024. Both figures represent dramatic improvements from the picture at the close of the original study, when 45 states were above their benchmarks and the national ratio had been above its long-run average for more than a decade.”

The report also provides an appendix with a state-by-state sustainability analysis from 2002 to 2024.

Further information is accessible here.