What 687 San Diego Retirement Plans Show About Who Is Actually Ready

Across 687 San Diego County employer retirement plans, covering roughly 857,000 workers and about $58 billion in assets, the average balance per participant is about $68,000, and the gap between the best and worst funded plans is wide. Plans in the top quarter hold around $90,000 per participant. Plans in the bottom quarter hold around $24,000. Where you work has a real effect on how prepared you are to retire.

The spread is the story. Plans in the top quarter of the county hold around $90,000 per participant. Plans in the bottom quarter hold around $24,000. That is close to a 3.7 to 1 gap between the best and worst funded plans in the same county. Where you work in San Diego affects how prepared you are to retire, often more than people realize.

San Diego figures: U.S. Department of Labor Form 5500, filing year 2024. National average: Vanguard, How America Saves 2025 (year-end 2024).

The averages, with one caveat

The averages tell a sobering story too, with a caveat worth stating plainly. Measured across all 687 plans, the average San Diego participant holds about $68,000. Vanguard’s 2025 How America Saves report puts the national average near $148,000. Some of that gap is real and some is composition. National recordkeeper data leans toward larger, older, established employers with longer-tenured staff. This local dataset counts every qualifying San Diego plan, including newer, higher-turnover, and lower-wage workforces that pull the average down. So the honest read is not that San Diegans are bad savers. It is that the full local picture is more sober than the national headline, and far more uneven underneath it.

The numbers, at a glance

• Plans covered: about 690, with roughly 857,000 workers and $58 billion in assets
• Average balance per San Diego participant: about $68,000
• The typical plan: about $50,600 per participant
• Top quarter of plans: about $90,000. Bottom quarter: about $24,000
• National average for comparison: about $148,000 (Vanguard, 2025)

What this means depends on where you sit

What this means depends on which side of the plan you sit on. If you are an employee, the quality of your employer’s plan is largely out of your hands, but your contribution rate, your investment choices, and what you do with old accounts from past jobs are not. Those levers move the number more than most people expect. If you run a company and your plan sits below the local median, that is not just a benefits line item. It is a retention issue and a fiduciary one, and it is measurable.

How these numbers were built

Source is U.S. Department of Labor Form 5500 filings, filing year 2024, for San Diego County defined contribution plans with 100 or more participants. 687 plans, about 857,000 participants, about $58 billion in assets. “Average participant balance” means total plan assets divided by total participants. Form 5500 participant counts include separated workers who still hold a balance, which makes the per-worker figures conservative rather than inflated. National benchmark is Vanguard, How America Saves 2025, using year-end 2024 data. No individual employer or plan is named, and only county-wide medians, quartiles, and totals are reported.

Where does your plan land?

If you work for a San Diego employer, this shows how much the plan you were handed varies from the one down the street. What you can’t see from a county-wide average is where yours falls, or what the levers you do control are worth over time. If you run a company and you’re wondering whether your plan sits above or below the local median, that’s answerable too, and worth knowing before an employee asks. Bring your latest statement and we can look at where yours lands.