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It’s not a partisan issue. Right, left, and middle agree that too many Americans have too little wealth. Just over 20% of all Americans have no wealth at all.

Since 2005, the NCEO has conducted periodic surveys of ESOP companies on their corporate governance practices, such as board compensation, how the board is constructed, and how trustees are selected and paid.

A common concern about ESOPs is their potentially higher level of risk for participants than a diversified 401(k) plan.

Compensation surveys provide key insights into job roles and their salaries that help employers determine appropriate compensation strategies and recruit competitively. While industry and overall surveys may contribute to compensation analysis, having an ESOP affects a company's culture and regulatory burdens, and therefore it has specific implications on compensation amount and structure.

Filing data for 2020 and 2021 indicates a moderate uptick in new ESOPs, over 60,000 new active participants, and a strong two years for the construction industry.

Building the right board and setting appropriate compensation are key considerations for any company, arguably even more so for ESOP companies. The NCEO ESOP company survey provides some of the only data to help ESOPs with meaningful comparisons.

An important question in the ESOP community is the circumstances surrounding plan terminations. To help provide some clear answers, we analyzed all plans that terminated since our last report on this topic in March 2021. This primarily covers filing years 2020 and 2021.