From strong public pension finances to questions about AI in government and nurses warning about Palantir, we have gathered the best stories about pensions and retirement security from the previous week. This is the news you need to know in the fight for a secure retirement.
Here’s what happened this week in pensions:
Public Pension Finances Are Stronger Than at Any Point in More Than 20 Years
New research from the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems shows public pensions are in the strongest financial position in two decades. The data shows dramatic improvement in the fiscal sustainability of public pensions. In 2018, pension liabilities were growing faster than the economy in 45 states. Today, that is true in just two.
The report, Measuring the Fiscal Sustainability of Public Pensions, builds on the sustainability valuation framework NCPERS introduced in 2022 as a complement to traditional funding measures. The approach considers pension obligations in relation to a state’s long-term economic capacity. One could compare this to how a homeowner would evaluate a 30-year mortgage against decades of expected income rather than a single year’s paycheck.
This approach contrasts with the sky-is-falling narratives pushed by public pension adversaries like Reason, Equable, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
NIRS: Americans Overwhelmingly Agree Nation Faces Retirement “Crisis”
New research from the National Institute on Retirement Security this week finds growing anxiety about retirement. Eighty percent of Americans say the nation faces a retirement crisis. Support for defined benefit institutions is strong, with 76% having a favorable view. The NIRS report also indicates that more than half–53 percent–of respondents oppose employers offering cryptocurrency in employer-based retirement savings plans. Meanwhile, 77% think allowing crypto in workplace retirement plans is risky.
“Americans are telling us that retirement security is becoming harder to achieve as they struggle with the affordability of everyday life,” said Dan Doonan, NIRS executive director and report co-author. “Housing, healthcare, debt and other expenses are competing with the need to save for retirement. At the same time, Americans are confronting new questions about AI and cryptocurrency as the retirement landscape becomes increasingly complex.”
Labor Unions Pass AI Convention Resolutions as Trade Groups Promote AI Use Cases
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees signaled renewed caution about artificial intelligence at its national convention last week in Chicago, where delegates adopted a resolution titled “Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace.”
The action builds on AFSCME’s existing position that AI could enhance job quality and public services, but should be implemented only with worker input and safeguards against displacement and surveillance. Earlier this year, AFSCME Council 31 adopted a resolution opposing the use of AI to displace workers or degrade public services, as AFSCME’s congressional advocacy has emphasized that AI should complement, not replace, workers.
Nearly a decade ago, consulting firms like McKinsey, with long track records of pushing public sector outsourcing and privatization, identified roughly one-quarter of government employment as administrative work especially susceptible to automation. They predicted that 60–80% of tasks in major government back-office functions could be automated through AI, and projected millions of office-support jobs disappearing across the U.S. economy, including government.
This summer, pension trade groups like NCPERS and NIRS are spotlighting artificial intelligence in pension administration agencies, hosting webinars on AI in retirement management. The NIRS-hosted AI presentation from Linea Solutions describes pension administration moving toward a model in which a single human supervisor directs a “team” of AI agents, encouraging plans to “scale by adding agents, not headcount.” That vision echoes McKinsey’s 2019 automation outlook, which predicted that many occupations would shrink through “attrition and reduced hiring.”
Finally, a new Segal analysis this week highlights another artificial intelligence-related dimension of pension stewardship, arguing that as reliance on AI grows, cybersecurity is now a fiduciary governance responsibility for pension trustees.
Taken together, labor unions and consulting firms are urging caution on AI. At the same time, pension trade groups provide vendors a venue to sell outsourced services to public pension agencies and pitch replacing humans with robot agents.
Nurses Target Palantir Pension Investments
Registered nurses with National Nurses United are calling on pension funds to divest from Palantir, citing the company’s work with federal immigration enforcement and its expanding role in health care. In Chicago Thursday, nurses and union allies protested outside the Cook County Pension Fund, advocating for trustees to divest the $28 million they say the fund currently holds in Palantir.
Nurses have raised concerns both about Palantir technology used to identify people for immigration enforcement and its growing use in hospital staffing and scheduling. The Chicago action is part of coordinated protests in eight cities and represents NNU’s largest national action against Palantir to date.
Fiduciary Duty Is More than Dollar Signs
A new National Review commentary argues that states need new laws to keep public pension trustees focused exclusively on financial returns. In the magazine founded by a noted segregationist, author Jay Rogers argues that aggressive investment returns should be a fiduciary’s sole focus, and that new redundant state laws are necessary to reinforce this worldview.
But Rogers is wrong; fiduciary duty has never meant simply chasing the highest possible return at all costs. Trustees must prudently manage risk and protect the long-term interests of workers and retirees, including factors like corporate governance, labor practices, ethics, climate risks, and AI cybersecurity threats.
For example, it is appropriate for a fiduciary to question investing state corrections workers’ retirement funds in private prison operators that privatize government jobs. An investment that eliminates the job of a pension recipient presents a risk to the fund itself, no matter how good the returns are, because a fiduciary’s primary duty is to the active, deferred, and retired members of the plan, not National Review columnists.
Pension trustees must evaluate the full range of risks that could impact retirement security, like private equity. New laws supposedly protecting fiduciary judgment substitute legislators’ opinion at one moment in time for that of the fiduciaries already legally responsible for the fund. Their efforts to minimize so-called political interference have the opposite practical outcome: they inject even more partisan politics into the equation. Public pension advocates should oppose legislation that ties the hands of fiduciaries and undermines their ability to evaluate risk.
And if that approach raises the blood pressure of commentators in a segregationist-founded magazine, so be it. The point is clear: fiduciary duty is not limited to chasing returns at all costs.
Be sure to check back next Friday for the latest news in the fight for a secure retirement! For now, sign up for NPPC News Clips to receive daily pension news from across the country directly to your inbox.