Anne Stausboll, Chief Executive Officer for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), today issued the following statement in response to a national study on public pension assets, released this week by the Pew Center on the States.
“The fiscal year 2009 that Pew chose completely missed the great rebound in asset value that pension funds experienced in the past two years. Since March 31, 2009, CalPERS has gained at least 35 percent in market value.
“The omission of nearly two years of investment performance from the Pew report presents a misleading picture of the health of public pension funds. We urge policymakers to restrain any rush to judgment about the sustainability of our Fund that is based on short-term, incomplete information. Including the two recessions of the recent decade, CalPERS achieved annualized returns of 8.6 percent since July 1988.”
The National Association of State Retirement Administrators (NASRA) and the National Council on Teacher Retirement have issued a brief detailing the investment gains achieved by state and local government pension systems. The issue brief is available on NASRA's website.
CalPERS is the nation’s largest public pension fund with approximately $236 billion in market assets. The Fund provides retirement benefits to more than 1.6 million State, public school, and local public agency employees, retirees, and their families, and health benefits to nearly 1.3 million members. The average CalPERS pension is $2,220 per month. For more information about CalPERS, visit www.calpers.ca.gov.