ASHE Pension Results 2018

Date published: 12 April 2019

The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings Pension Results for 2018

The proportion of employees in Northern Ireland who belonged to a workplace pension scheme increased over the year to 74%. This is the 6th consecutive year of increases in pension membership.

Key points

• The increase in the proportion of employees belonging to a workplace pension scheme was due to increases in membership of Occupational Defined Benefit and Occupational Defined Contribution pensions.
• Occupational Defined Benefit pensions have been the most common form of workplace pension for the past ten years, varying between 26% and 36%. However, the second most common pension, Occupational Defined Contribution pensions has increased sixfold in the last ten years, from 4% to 24%.
• Nine out of ten public sector employees (90%) and two out of three (65%) private sector employees were members of a workplace pension scheme.  This is an increase of 10 percentage points (pps) for public sector and 42pps for private sector employees since the introduction of automatic enrolment six years ago.
• Pension membership varies widely by industry, with those employed in ‘public administration and defence’ most likely to have a pension (96%), and those in ‘Accommodation and food service activities' least likely (44%).
• Full report available here