Americans aren’t saving enough for retirement and too many aren’t saving at all – we’ve all heard that before. In mid-August, Cowden Associates/Cowden Advisers will release the results of the first annual Tri-State 401(k) Survey, revealing baseline participation and contribution rates for the Western PA, OH, and WV area. These numbers will help us evaluate changes sure to come from automatic enrollment and automatic contribution increases proscribed by the Pension Protection Act.

For now, Fidelity Investment’s 2007 401(k) report, an analysis of over 10 million participants in nearly 13,000 plans administered by Fidelity at the end of 2006, gives some not-so-rosy numbers: For plans administered by Fidelity, the average employee participation rate fell over one percent

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