well the market volatility triggered by President Trump's onag again off-again tariffs have a lot of people keeping a close eye on their retirement accounts but there's a large chunk of workers who don't have access to that type of savings A bill moving through Trenton would change that by making the state administered retire ready NJ program eligible to more private sector workers at businesses with less than 25 employees Our budget and finance writer John Wright Meer has more as part of our new reporting series under the dome exploring the state government and its impact on the people who live here John good to see you Thanks for coming in Let me just start with Retire Ready NJ because this is a fairly new initiative It's not state funded but the state administers it What are lawmakers looking to do they're looking to grow the pool of people who are eligible So this is for private sector workers if your employer does not already provide you with some sort of a retirement savings uh option And so the the law that established this passed several years ago set up that this would be available to the employees of companies with 25 or more workers And the bill that's being considered now in the legislature would lower that threshold basically take it away by making companies with 25 or less it's really one or more now have to offer this option to their workers That threshold was originally set because business lobbyists argued that it would be an undue burden on small businesses many of them operate with very few employees and they don't have advanced HR systems or or payroll uh processes that they could just do this But now the argument as we continue to see low generally low rates of retirement savings across the board that this should be extended down to the uh employees who work for these much smaller companies in New Jersey because why what's the argument that if folks have access through an employer plan they're more likely to save there are stud that's absolutely it There are studies that show that when you can make a a payroll deduction when you save the money before you even get it in your paycheck into your wallet basically there are uh studies that show the rates of savings are higher and of course New Jersey is known as one of the highest cost states in the nation And so a lot of these individuals are getting to retirement age And if they're relying just on their social security benefits they may not stretch as far in a state like New Jersey And the idea of programs like this is we want to keep people in New Jersey Let's say they have the deep roots here their grandchildren are here but if they reach their retirement age and they don't have adequate savings they have to consider possibly leaving the state This would be one way for people to save money so they could have adequate uh resources in their retirement years in addition to what they might get from social security When we're talking about businesses with 25 or fewer employees so I'm a small mom and pop shop and I've got three people I mean what are they saying about whether or not they'd be able to handle this type of you know it's a it's a burden It Yeah when we heard testimony this week in committee in Trenton just to that effect that for a lot of these really small companies and again this is would be a requirement for companies with one or more employees uh that they're the ones doing the payroll maybe the owner they're not farming it out to some big HR company and so it's just another hour in the day that they would be taken up in what is really a you know a a really labor intensive anyone who owns a small business knows they put a lot of time and hours into it 24/7 That's the issue we have to watch as this bill goes forward in the state house Does it look like there is support for it i mean what's the talk about how many folks in New Jersey are lacking retirement accounts and access to it does it seem like there's really uh support for it given that there's a lot of advocacy for this And if you look at a study from just a few years ago by the Federal Reserve it indicated nearly 50% of all families in the US lack retirement savings lack access to an account to this type of an account And so that's a big portion of the population that's going into their retirement years relying on social security which we have to now be a little bit concerned about as things play out in Washington DC And again New Jersey is such a high cost state that social security might not really make it to the finish line for you with all your bills on a monthly basis Yeah And as we see inflation waiver that adds to the high cost of living So perhaps why there's more of a spotlight on this right now for sure Um all right You can find all of John Wright's reporting including this and the rest of our under the dome project on our website njspotlightenews.org John thanks for coming in Good to see you You're welcome Under the Dome is made possible in 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