• 46 per cent of adult employees in the UK are members of an occupational workplace pension scheme.
• 32 per cent of the workforce are members of salary-related pension schemes and 14 per cent are members of money-purchase schemes. The remaining 10 per cent with pensions are members of stakeholder schemes or personal pension schemes.
• In 1991 there were 5.6 million members of final-salary schemes working in the private sector, according to Government Actuary's Department.
• 10 per cent of final-salary schemes in the private sector closed to new employees in 2004, compared with 26 per cent in 2003 and 19 per cent in 2002.
• 71 per cent of employers increased their contributions to staff pension schemes in 2004 to address funding pressures.
• 34 per cent of members of final-salary schemes are still working, 37 per cent are pensioners and 29 per cent are deferred members who have left the employer but retain rights under its scheme.
• The average long-term employer contribution to a final-salary scheme has risen from 15.7 per cent in 2003 to 16.6 per cent.
• The average combined employer and employee contribution to a defined-contribution scheme is less than 7.6 per cent.
• The average contribution to an employee's stakeholder pension is £720 a year, including employee and employer contributions.
• Only 680,000 employees are contributing to a stakeholder pension (2.6 per cent of the employed workforce).
• Employees are saving an average of only 2.9 per cent of their salaries in a stakeholder scheme.

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• Employees in the hospitality, community care and construction sectors are the most likely to have lost all pensions coverage.
• One in five workers in restaurants and hotels now has a pension.
• Employees in financial services and retail are most likely to have had pensions that based on their salary replaced by pensions that are dependent on investment risks.
• Employers' contribution holidays and reductions were worth £18.5bn between 1988 and 2003. In the same period they took direct refunds of surpluses worth £1.2bn, according to the Inland Revenue.
• A woman's retirement income from all sources is on average 53 per cent of that of a man's.
• Women from ethnic minorities are less likely to have pensions: only 3 per cent of Bangladeshi and Pakistani women in the UK have an occupational pension.
• A third fewer people earning under £200 a week now have a pension compared with six years ago.
• 4 per cent fewer men earning more than £600 a week now have a pension compared with six years ago.
• The number of women earning more than £600 a week who have a pension has increased in the past six years.
• Fewer than half of all people aged under 30 are saving for a pension, yet 62 per cent of those born in the 1950s and 73 per cent of those born in the 1960s started a pension before they were 30.

Sources: TUC family resources survey 2002 -03 and the NationaL Association of Pension Funds annual survey, 2004.