Highest Funded Pension Plans

Top 100 US public pension plans by funded ratio. Data from Public Plans Database.

# Plan Funded Ratio Grade
1 Jacksonville Police and Fire 128.1% B
2 New York City Educational 108.9% B
3 Denver Employees Retirement Plan 106.9% B
4 Municipal Employees' Retirement System of Michigan 103.4% B
5 Baltimore Fire and Police Employees Retirement System 103.0% B
6 Sacramento County ERS 101.7% B
7 Omaha ERS 101.4% B
8 West Virginia Consolidated Public Retirement Board 100.1% B
9 Iowa Municipal Fire and Police 100.0% B
10 Baton Rouge City Parish Retirement System 99.5% B
11 Oklahoma Police Pension and Retirement System 98.9% B
12 Jacksonville General Employee Pension Plan 98.8% B
13 Milwaukee City ERS 98.6% B
14 Manchester Employees' Contributory Retirement System 98.6% B
15 Oklahoma Teachers Retirement System 98.6% B
16 New York State Teachers Retirement System 98.6% B
17 Kansas City Police 98.6% B
18 St. Paul Teachers' Retirement Fund Association 98.5% B
19 Rhode Island Employees Retirement System 98.0% B
20 New York City Fire 97.6% B
21 Fairfax County Employees' Retirement System 97.6% B
22 Chicago Municipal Employees 97.3% B
23 Illinois State Retirement Systems 97.2% B
24 Louisiana State Parochial Employees 97.0% B
25 Illinois State Universities Retirement System 96.6% B
26 Vermont Teachers Retirement System 96.6% B
27 Charlotte Firefighters' Retirement System 96.1% B
28 Nashville-Davidson Metropolitan Employees Benefit Trust Fund 95.8% B
29 St. Louis Police 95.5% B
30 Nebraska Retirement Systems 95.1% B
31 Missouri State Employees Retirement System 95.1% B
32 Pittsburgh Fire 94.9% B
33 San Diego County Employees Retirement Association 94.3% B
34 Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System 93.9% B
35 Kern County Employees Retirement Association 93.5% B
36 Chicago Police 92.5% B
37 Boston Retirement Board 92.0% B
38 Delaware Public Employees Retirement System 91.0% B
39 Colorado Public Employees Retirement Association 90.7% B
40 Louisiana Municipal Police 89.7% B
41 Kentucky Teachers Retirement System 89.7% B
42 Florida Retirement System 89.6% B
43 Houston Municipal 89.4% B
44 Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System 88.3% B
45 Oregon Employees Retirement System 88.2% B
46 Cincinnati Employees Retirement System 88.0% B
47 Nevada Public Employees Retirement System 87.3% B
48 Seattle Employees Retirement System 87.0% B
49 Fairfax County Uniformed 86.6% B
50 St. Louis Firemen 86.2% B
51 New Jersey Division of Pension and Benefits 85.9% B
52 Oklahoma Public Employees Retirement System 85.5% B
53 Kansas Public Employees Retirement System 85.4% B
54 Atlanta Police Fund 85.1% B
55 Dallas Police and Fire 84.3% B
56 Montgomery County Employees Retirement System 83.9% B
57 Illinois Teachers Retirement System 83.7% B
58 Missouri Public School and Education Employees Retirement Systems 83.6% B
59 San Francisco City and County Retirement System 82.9% B
60 Detroit Employees General Retirement System 82.6% B
61 Utah Retirement Systems 82.4% B
62 New York City Employees Retirement System 82.2% B
63 Arkansas Teachers Retirement System 82.1% B
64 Missouri Local Government Employees Retirement System 82.0% B
65 Alameda County Employee's Retirement Association 81.8% B
66 Los Angeles Water and Power 81.6% B
67 Hawaii Employees Retirement System 81.4% B
68 Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System 81.4% B
69 St. Louis Public School Retirement System 81.3% B
70 St. Louis Employees 80.9% C
71 Austin Police 80.5% C
72 New York City Police 79.9% B
73 Maryland State Retirement and Pension System 79.9% B
74 Philadelphia Municipal Retirement System 78.5% C
75 Idaho Public Employee Retirement System 78.2% C
76 South Dakota Retirement System 78.1% B
77 Oklahoma Fire 78.0% C
78 Louisiana Schools 77.5% C
79 Detroit Police and Fire Retirement System 77.4% B
80 New York City Teachers Retirement System 76.8% C
81 Alaska Teachers Retirement System 76.8% C
82 Kansas City Fire 76.7% B
83 Kansas City Missouri Employees' Retirement System 76.7% C
84 Vermont State Employees Retirement System 76.3% C
85 California State Teachers Retirement System 75.9% C
86 Massachusetts Teachers Retirement Board 75.8% C
87 New Orleans Employees' Retirement System 75.8% C
88 Indiana Public Employees Retirement System 75.5% C
89 North Dakota Public Employees Retirement System 75.5% C
90 Oklahoma Municipal Employees 75.5% B
91 North Carolina Retirement Systems 75.2% C
92 Minnesota Teachers Retirement Association 75.2% C
93 Texas County & District Retirement System 75.1% C
94 Birmingham Police and Fire 75.1% C
95 Dallas ERS 75.0% C
96 Kentucky Retirement Systems 75.0% C
97 New Mexico Public Employees Retirement Association 74.8% C
98 Oklahoma City Employee Retirement System 74.7% B
99 Milwaukee County Employees Retirement System 74.3% C
100 Georgia Teachers Retirement System 74.3% C

Why this ranking matters

US public pension systems collectively oversee retirement promises for more than 14 million active workers and 12 million retirees across state, city, county, and special-district plans. The aggregate unfunded liability across the 197 plans tracked in the Public Plans Database sits in the trillions of dollars, a fiscal exposure that influences state credit ratings, municipal borrowing costs, and the tax burden on residents over multi-decade horizons. Rankings like this one give policymakers, journalists, plan participants, and bond analysts a fast read on which systems are pulling ahead and which are slipping further into structural underfunding.

How to read the numbers

Funded ratio is the share of accrued liabilities currently backed by plan assets; 80 percent is the benchmark most actuarial standards consider healthy, while ratios under 60 percent indicate severe underfunding. Annual Required Contribution (ARC) coverage measures the percentage of the actuarially recommended annual payment that the sponsoring government actually makes, chronic underpayment is the single most common driver of widening unfunded liabilities. Five-year investment returns capture portfolio performance net of fees, smoothed across market cycles to dampen single-year noise. Each metric tells a different story: a plan can have strong returns but poor ARC coverage, or excellent ARC discipline but a legacy underfunding gap that takes decades to close.

What drives plan health

Three factors dominate long-run funded-ratio trajectories: (1) actuarial assumptions, particularly the assumed rate of return and mortality tables; (2) contribution discipline, including whether the sponsoring employer pays the full ARC every year; and (3) benefit design, including cost-of-living adjustments, retirement age, and whether new hires are placed into less generous tiers. Plans that have closed defined-benefit accruals to new employees and shifted them to defined-contribution or hybrid designs are gradually reducing future liability growth, though the existing unfunded liability remains for the legacy workforce. Investment performance matters but cannot independently rescue a chronically underfunded plan, the math of compound underpayment eventually overwhelms even strong portfolio returns.

Comparing across states

State-to-state comparisons require care. A plan reporting an 85 percent funded ratio on a 7.0 percent assumed return is not directly comparable to one reporting 85 percent on a 7.5 percent assumption, the lower-discount-rate plan is implicitly using more conservative liability measures. Fiscal-year-end dates also vary (June 30, July 1, September 30, December 31), introducing timing mismatches when market returns swing sharply between cutoffs. The Public Plans Database standardizes wherever it can but underlying actuarial choices remain plan-specific. Cross-reference the methodology notes on each plan profile before drawing direct head-to-head conclusions.

What to look at next

For deeper context, browse the state-level overviews to see how plans within the same fiscal jurisdiction cluster, or review the plan-type rankings to compare teacher systems, general-employee systems, and public-safety plans on equivalent footing. The methodology page documents exactly which series are ingested, how grades are assigned, and how cross-plan comparability is handled. For pension-policy news and academic analysis, the Public Plans Database at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, and the Center for Retirement Research are the canonical primary sources.

Frequently asked questions

Is a higher funded ratio always better? Generally yes, but a ratio above 100 percent calculated under aggressive assumptions can mask underlying weakness, actuarial choices matter. Look at the discount rate and asset-smoothing method alongside the headline number.

Why do some plans rank well on returns but poorly on funded status? Investment returns are only one of four levers (contributions, benefit accruals, demographic changes, returns). A plan with strong returns but persistent underfunding usually reflects either chronic ARC shortfalls in past decades or a benefit-design legacy that newer hires no longer accrue toward.

How often does this data update? Most plans publish a comprehensive annual financial report and an actuarial valuation each fiscal year. The Public Plans Database ingests these as they are released, so the reporting year on each plan profile reflects the most recently audited disclosures available at last ingest.

Who maintains the underlying data? The Public Plans Database is a joint project of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the Center for State and Local Government Excellence at MissionSquare Research Institute, and the National Association of State Retirement Administrators. PlainPension ingests, normalizes, and links, we do not modify the underlying figures.

Limitations of this ranking

Rankings of this kind compress a multidimensional picture into a single ordering. A plan's overall fiscal position depends on assumptions, contribution policy, demographic trends, investment strategy, and benefit design, none of which collapses neatly into one number. Use this list as a starting point for further reading, not as a final verdict. The most fiscally consequential decisions a plan, sponsor, or beneficiary makes will involve actuarial analysis that goes far beyond any single headline metric.

Every figure on PlainPension is rendered directly from the Public Plans Database (Boston College Center for Retirement Research), no number is typed in by an editor. This ranking sorts plans by highest funded ratio (actuarial basis), live from the dataset. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.