Name: The Forgotten 401(k) Index 2026
Creator: Heritage Gold Partners
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

12,266,256 former employees still hold a balance in 2,736 large 401(k) plans at 2,614 U.S. employers, according to U.S. Department of Labor, Form 5500 filings, plan year 2024. That is 22.8% of all participants in those plans.

Counts are people, not dollars. Every figure on this page comes from the downloadable CSV and is licensed CC BY 4.0.

Key findings

12,266,256 former employees hold a balance in 2,736 large 401(k) plans across 2,614 employers.
22.8% of participants in these plans are former employees who still hold a balance.
Walmart has 280,376 former employees with a balance, the most of any employer.
The five employers with the most former employees account for 709,514 people, 5.8% of the total.
253 employers each have 10,000 or more former employees with a balance.
Cloud Software Group has the highest share of former employees: 96.5% of 5,554 participants (minimum 5,000 participants).
At 65 of 1,911 employers with 5,000 or more participants, former employees outnumber current ones.
Texas leads all states with 1,153,739 former employees across 255 plans.
Vanguard keeps records for 989,805 former employees across 213 employers, 8.1% of the total.
The three largest named recordkeepers keep records for 18.7% of all former employees in the dataset; 1,626 employers do not name a recordkeeper.

The 25 employers with the most former employees

Together these 25 employers account for 15.9% of all former employees with a balance. Each name links to what the filing says about that plan.

#	Employer	State	Former employees	Participants	Share
1	Walmart	AR	280,376	1,933,412	14.5%
2	Amazon	WA	133,302	1,336,478	10%
3	FedEx	TN	109,905	310,374	35.4%
4	JPMorgan Chase	NJ	101,280	299,277	33.8%
5	RTX	CT	84,651	217,393	38.9%
6	IBM	NY	80,957	156,865	51.6%
7	AT&T	TX	80,561	232,488	34.7%
8	Starbucks	WA	78,402	307,988	25.5%
9	UnitedHealth Group	MN	74,068	278,507	26.6%
10	Wells Fargo	MN	70,701	288,416	24.5%
11	Bank of America	NC	69,624	254,477	27.4%
12	HCA Healthcare	TN	67,025	377,504	17.8%
13	CVS Health	RI	65,740	307,068	21.4%
14	Target	MN	64,472	475,573	13.6%
15	Boeing	WA	59,818	216,698	27.6%
16	Microsoft	WA	59,064	177,531	33.3%
17	Kaiser Foundation Health Plan	CA	58,925	349,466	16.9%
18	Verizon Communications	NJ	57,772	162,428	35.6%
19	Macy's	OH	53,084	170,858	31.1%
20	Insperity	TX	52,637	235,621	22.3%
21	Nordstrom	WA	50,782	108,781	46.7%
22	Northrop Grumman	VA	50,366	157,944	31.9%
23	UPS	GA	49,216	145,125	33.9%
24	Lockheed Martin	MD	48,023	186,283	25.8%
25	The Home Depot	GA	45,429	446,735	10.2%

Highest share of former employees

Employers with at least 5,000 participants, ranked by the share of participants who are former employees with a balance.

#	Employer	Share	Former employees	Participants
1	Cloud Software Group	96.5%	5,360	5,554
2	Avago Technologies U.S.	93.3%	19,421	20,820
3	Professional Education Services Group	91.5%	14,471	15,814
4	Open Text	80.8%	5,434	6,726
5	NFL Player Second Career Savings Plan	79%	8,770	11,102
6	The Cianbro Companies	71.4%	5,448	7,626
7	Emerson Electric	70.4%	11,645	16,539
8	Gen Digital	70.2%	4,459	6,354
9	The Judge Group	69.6%	5,253	7,542
10	Ascension Healthcare	68.3%	5,567	8,146

Former employees by state

States are assigned by the employer's headquarters address in the filing.

#	State	Former employees	Plans	Share of total
1	Texas	1,153,739	255	9.4%
2	California	1,101,948	295	9%
3	New York	1,005,550	201	8.2%
4	New Jersey	705,699	126	5.8%
5	Illinois	684,962	158	5.6%
6	Pennsylvania	591,868	139	4.8%
7	Washington	588,372	47	4.8%
8	Minnesota	534,814	92	4.4%
9	Virginia	497,405	107	4.1%
10	Ohio	495,545	116	4%
11	Florida	469,884	120	3.8%
12	Georgia	435,483	93	3.6%
13	Tennessee	431,143	65	3.5%
14	North Carolina	384,914	70	3.1%
15	Massachusetts	329,374	101	2.7%
16	Arkansas	324,728	13	2.6%
17	Connecticut	284,137	55	2.3%
18	Michigan	283,591	81	2.3%
19	Wisconsin	205,330	67	1.7%
20	Missouri	193,043	61	1.6%
21	Maryland	190,899	37	1.6%
22	Arizona	156,628	49	1.3%
23	Rhode Island	120,800	14	1%
24	Colorado	116,249	38	0.9%
25	Kentucky	109,554	26	0.9%
26	Indiana	108,811	37	0.9%
27	Utah	83,592	32	0.7%
28	Iowa	68,141	18	0.6%
29	Oregon	64,767	24	0.5%
30	District of Columbia	63,768	16	0.5%
31	Nebraska	52,285	19	0.4%
32	Louisiana	50,183	14	0.4%
33	South Carolina	43,006	22	0.4%
34	Delaware	42,289	13	0.3%
35	Alabama	38,626	13	0.3%
36	Nevada	37,856	14	0.3%
37	Oklahoma	36,522	16	0.3%
38	Maine	30,601	7	0.2%
39	Kansas	27,000	13	0.2%
40	Idaho	21,837	6	0.2%
41	Alaska	20,643	9	0.2%
42	North Dakota	13,728	6	0.1%
43	Hawaii	10,744	5	0.1%
44	New Mexico	7,949	3	0.1%
45	West Virginia	7,101	4	0.1%
46	New Hampshire	6,717	4	0.1%
47	Mississippi	6,650	3	0.1%
48	Montana	4,263	3	0%
49	VT	3,618	1	0%
50	SD	2,963	1	0%
51	PR	1,747	1	0%

Former employees by recordkeeper

The recordkeeper is the company that holds the account records and handles the rollover paperwork. 1,626 employers, holding 61% of former employees, do not name one in the filing and are not ranked.

#	Recordkeeper	Former employees	Plans	Share of total
1	Vanguard	989,805	222	8.1%
2	Empower	658,871	177	5.4%
3	Alight Solutions	646,112	47	5.3%
4	Merrill Lynch	604,443	85	4.9%
5	T. Rowe Price	370,358	107	3%
6	Charles Schwab	318,664	118	2.6%
7	Voya	255,180	29	2.1%
8	Fidelity Investments	252,839	41	2.1%
9	Transamerica	235,580	91	1.9%
10	John Hancock	99,342	42	0.8%
11	Milliman	60,280	16	0.5%
12	Insperity	52,637	2	0.4%
13	ADP	49,421	29	0.4%
14	TIAA	48,657	7	0.4%
15	Principal	43,636	7	0.4%
16	Newport	29,260	16	0.2%
17	Ascensus	29,250	8	0.2%
18	Conduent	19,175	2	0.2%
19	Aon	6,265	1	0.1%
20	Prudential	4,255	2	0%
21	Lincoln Financial	2,920	1	0%
22	Nationwide	2,100	1	0%
23	WTW	1,497	1	0%

Methodology

The index is built from U.S. Department of Labor, Form 5500 filings, plan year 2024, covering 2,614 employers and 2,736 plans. “Former employees” are participants who have left the employer and still have a balance in the plan. “Participants” is the total reported for the plan, current and former. Plans filed by the same employer entry are added together. The set covers defined-contribution plans (mostly 401(k), some 403(b) and multiemployer plans) where at least 1,000 former employees still hold a balance; that is what “large” means here.

Limits to keep in mind:

The index counts people, not dollars. The filings used here do not give a balance per person.
A person with balances at two employers is counted once for each.
The dataset covers the 2,614 employers listed, not every 401(k) plan in the country.
Shares are calculated on 2,598 employers. 16 are left out of percentages because they report zero participants or fewer participants than former employees.
1,626 employers do not name a recordkeeper and 6 do not give a U.S. state, so they are missing from those two rankings.
Figures are for plan year 2024 and may have changed since.

How to cite

Reporters and researchers may use any figure on this page with attribution. A ready-to-use sentence:

12,266,256 former employees still hold a balance in 2,736 large 401(k) plans, according to the Forgotten 401(k) Index 2026 from Heritage Gold Partners, based on Department of Labor Form 5500 filings for plan year 2024.

Citation:

Heritage Gold Partners, "The Forgotten 401(k) Index 2026," based on U.S. Department of Labor, Form 5500 filings, plan year 2024. https://heritagegoldpartners.gold/research/forgotten-401k-index

Download the full dataset (CSV, 2,614 rows). Columns: employer, state, recordkeeper, separated, totalParticipants, pct_separated, url. Licensed CC BY 4.0.

Heritage Gold Partners is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any employer or recordkeeper named here. Names appear only to identify the plans described in public Department of Labor filings. Educational only, not investment, tax, or legal advice.

The Forgotten 401(k) Index 2026