Pressure Mounts to Reunite Workers With Old Retirement Accounts

The U.S. Labor Department under President Joe Biden is facing pressure on two sides to help reconnect missing retirement plan participants with the benefits they’re owed.

America’s workforce is more mobile than ever. Workers change jobs an average of 12 times over a 30-year career and often leave behind important employee benefits like 401(k)s, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Disparate accounts don’t perform as well in the markets, and many workers are never reconnected with small savings they maintained earlier in their careers. Those losses add up to trillions of unrealized gains that make it harder for ...