ASHE Pension Results 2019

Date published: 04 March 2020

The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings Pension Results for 2019

The proportion of employees in Northern Ireland who belonged to a workplace pension scheme in April 2019 was unchanged over the year at 74%. This is the first time in the last seven years that pension membership has not increased.

• Nine out of ten public sector employees (91%) and two out of three (65%) private sector employees were members of a workplace pension scheme in 2019. This is an increase of 11 percentage points (pps) for public sector employees and 42pps for private sector employees since the introduction of automatic enrolment seven years ago.
• Occupational Defined Benefit pension has been the most common form of workplace pension for the past ten years, ranging from 36% in 2009 to 26% in 2017, and was 30% in 2019. Occupational Defined Contribution has increased more than sixfold in the last ten years, from 4% to 25% making it the second most common pension in 2019.
• Pension membership varies widely by industry with those employed in ‘public administration and defence’ most likely to have a pension (97%) and those in ‘Accommodation and food service activities’ least likely (44%).
• Full report available here