Across all five state retirement systems, typical career workers pay for about 5% of the cost of their pension benefits. They receive an average of $1.7 million to $3.6 million.
Illinois has nation’s worst pension debt. Maybe that’s because state lawmakers take a problem they aren’t sure exists, apply a solution they don’t know will work and never determine the cost.
Most public employees in Illinois receive a single pension upon retirement. But some workers don’t just get one pension – they get two or three. This is made possible by either working multiple government jobs at the same time, or retiring from one public job and beginning a second within a different pension system. Both...