The Form 5500 is the annual report nearly every employer-sponsored retirement plan must file with the U.S. Department of Labor. It's public record — and it's the primary source for every figure on this site.
What a filing contains
- Plan basics — the sponsor (your employer), the plan name and number, when it was established, and what kind of plan it is.
- Participant counts — how many people are active in the plan and how many hold account balances.
- Schedule H financials (large plans) — total assets, contributions split between employer and employees, investment income, benefits paid out, and administrative expenses.
- The audit — large plans must attach an independent accountant's opinion. A "clean" (unmodified) opinion is the norm; qualified or adverse opinions are worth noticing.
What it doesn't contain
The structured filing does not list the funds in your menu or their expense ratios — those live in dense PDF attachments and participant disclosures. So a filing can tell you a plan's size, contribution patterns, and reported administrative costs, but not the full all-in cost a participant pays. We're explicit about that boundary in our methodology.
Timing
Plans file roughly seven months after their plan year ends (often with extensions), so the most recent public data typically describes a plan year one to two years back. That lag is the same for everyone who uses this data — including professionals.