Ontario’s new public sector pension manager comes into effect

Private sector pension coverage continues to decline as public sector pension coverage continues to increase, according to new data on pension plans Statistics Canada (StatsCan) released on Friday

Notably, the public sector now accounts for 51.6% of total pension plan membership in Canada, according to the StatsCan report, which is based on data from Jan. 1, 2016.

“Membership in public sector pension plans increased by 16,500 to 3,229,000. Meanwhile, the number of members in private sector plans fell by 11,600 to 3,032,000,” StatsCanreports.

Overall, the proportion of workers who are covered by a workplace pension continued to decline to 37.8% at the end of 2015 from 38.1% at the end of 2014. Although the pension coverage rate remains slightly higher for women (39.5%) than it is for men (36.2%), both rates were down slightly from the previous year.

Moreover, the percentage of workers with defined-benefit (DB) coverage continues to decline as well. StatsCan says that DB plans accounted for 67.1% of employees with a pension in 2015, down from 70% in 2014 and from more than 90% in the 1980s.

Conversely, membership in defined-contribution (DC) plans increased by 2.8% in 2015, and 87.1% of workers with DC plans are in the private sector.

The StatsCan report also notes that membership in other types of penson plans — such as hybrid, composite and DB/DC plans — grew by 19.3% in 2015.

Finally, the report says that total employer and employee pension contributions rose by 5.9% in 2015 to $67.2 billion and that the market value of pension assets increased by 3% during the year to $1.7 trillion.

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