The 100 largest U.S. public employee retirement systems had $3.369 trillion in assets as of June 30, a 1% decrease from three months earlier, said the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest quarterly survey of public pension funds.
Earnings on investments totaled $32 billion in the second quarter, with government contributions of $26.3 billion and employee contributions of $11.8 billion. Benefit payments increased 9.5% to $68.3 billion from the previous quarter.
Corporate stocks, which make up 35.9% of the pension funds’ total cash and security holdings, decreased 4% to $1.211 trillion from three months earlier; and corporate bonds decreased 2.5% to $420.1 billion.
Federal government securities and international securities saw small increases in the second quarter, rising 1.4% to $260.8 billion and 0.9% to $618.3 billion, respectively.
The 100 public pension systems represent 88.4% of all U.S. public pension fund assets.
