The Financial Condition of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s Multiemployer Program

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) is a government-owned corporation responsible for insuring the benefits of 41 million people who participate in defined benefit pension plans provided by private employers. About 10 million of those participants are covered by plans offered by groups of employers; such plans are insured by PBGC’s multiemployer program. That program has drawn increased scrutiny from policymakers in recent years because of the high likelihood that it will not be able to meet all of its insurance obligations, potentially causing participants to lose insured benefits or putting pressure on the government to provide PBGC with greater federal resources. CBO has projected the claims on PBGC’s multiemployer program—which are likely to be relatively small in the coming decade but are projected to be much larger in the following decade—and has analyzed options for improving the program’s finances.