For the 100 largest public-employee pension systems in the country, assets (cash and investments) totaled $3,778.3 billion in the first quarter of 2018, decreasing by 0.7 percent from the 2017 fourth quarter level of $3,806.1 billion. However, compared to the same quarter in 2017, assets for these major publicpension systems increased 7.8 percent from $3,504.0 billion. The main driver of the slight quarterly decrease in assets is low earnings on investments, which totaled $14.3 billion during the first quarter of 2018. Earnings on investments is a critical contributor to the sustainability of pension plans. In the first quarter of 2018, it was not sufficient to make up for the deficit between contributions and benefits paid out (see Figure 1). The summary highlights the major asset categories (equities, debt instruments, and cash equivalents) and does not reflect all of the categories published for the Quarterly Survey of Public Pensions. Please see the complete
data sets at <www.census.gov/programs-surveys/qspp.html> for further detail.