Portable Benefits and Job Mobility: Evidence from State Auto-IRA Mandates

Abstract

Traditional employer-sponsored retirement plans create "job lock" as workers face costs when changing employers—unvested benefits, rollover hassles, and loss of employer matches. Beginning with Oregon in 2017, states have mandated that employers without retirement plans either offer one or automatically enroll workers in a state-run IRA program. These auto-IRAs are fully portable across jobs, potentially reducing retirement-related job lock. Using a difference-in-differences design exploiting staggered state adoption, I examine whether auto-IRA mandates affect worker job mobility. I find that mandates reduce average job tenure by approximately 2 months and increase job-to-job transition rates by 1.1 percentage points (7% relative to baseline). Effects are concentrated among workers in industries with historically low retirement plan coverage and among older workers aged 51–65, consistent with the job lock mechanism. These findings suggest that portable retirement benefits facilitate labor market flexibility without reducing retirement savings, informing debates over federal expansion of auto-IRA programs. \vspace{0.5cm} JEL Codes: J32, J62, J63, H75 Keywords: retirement savings, job mobility, automatic enrollment, portable benefits, job lock