From: bizjournals.com

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Americans accumulate the majority of their retirement funds through employer-sponsored plans, but more than 40 percent of full-time employees do not have access to 401(k) accounts or pensions. One proposed solution gaining some traction is for states to sponsor individual retirement accounts (IRAs) that are funded automatically via employers’ payroll process, without any action necessary by the employee.

But even though small businesses struggle to offer solid retirement plans, those businesses’ owners support of so-called auto-IRAs appears to drop significantly depending on whether they are government-sponsored or not, according to a new survey from Pew Charitable Trusts.

Compare those findings to companies with 500 workers or more, where about 90 percent of employees have access to a retirement plan, according to Bloomberg citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

More than 36 percent of U.S. workers are employed at companies with fewer than 100 workers — leaving about 42 million people with limited options for retirement savings, Bloomberg said.

Small business owners surveyed by Pew cited expense, limited administrative resources and lack of employee interest as the main reasons for not offering retirement plans. Almost three-quarters of the business owners queried who do not offer a plan said they would be no more likely to offer one in the next two years than they are now.

Employers without plans were either “somewhat” or “strongly” supportive of the idea of an IRA with automatic enrollment and deductions. However, the support varied depending on the sponsor of the programs. Almost 82 percent of respondents said they would support programs sponsored by a mutual fund, while 72 percent were interested in one sponsored by an insurance company.

There was less support for auto-IRAs run by the federal government or a state, according to the survey. Only 41 percent of respondents supported a program if a state or the federal government were the sponsor.

Five states, including California, Maryland, Oregon, Illinois, and Connecticut are currently working to set up portable individual retirement accounts that can follow workers through their careers, per Bloomberg. Each state will require employers either to offer a retirement plan or to sign up their workers for state-run, automatic IRAs.