pension plans weren't common in the US until the mid to late 1800s
contributions weren't tax-free until 1921
labor unions didn't really get involved until the 1940s, or during and after WW2
pension plans didn't have much legal protection until the ERISA standards of the 1970s

So pensions are pretty recent, and IMO largely became important in the 1940s because companies were prevented from competing on salary due to wartime wage controls:

long quoted section

But there was almost no indication for decades that employer-sponsored health insurance would spread from sea to shining sea.

World War II disrupted those trends. As demand for everything — particularly labor — climbed, Congress passed the Stabilization Act of 1942, which allowed the president to freeze wages and salaries for all the nation’s workers. A day after its passage, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order invoking these powers, which applied to “all forms of direct or indirect remuneration to an employee,” including but not limited to salaries and wages, as well as “bonuses, additional compensation, gifts, commissions, fees.”

But there was an exemption of massive proportions slipped into a fateful clause: “insurance and pension benefits” could grow “in a reasonable amount” during the freeze.

As companies struggled to deal with wartime labor shortages, the wage freeze left them in a serious bind: How could they retain workers if they couldn’t give raises? If they didn’t soon realize the allure of fringe benefits, insurance companies pressed that case through marketing campaigns, as historian Jennifer Klein has observed.

The Revenue Act of 1942 triggered another rush to enroll employees in health plans. By slapping corporations with tax rates of 80 or even up to 90 percent on any profits in excess of prewar revenue, Congress all but guaranteed a frenzied search for loopholes. Employee benefits, according to the new law, could be deducted from profits. As an anonymous employer observed in a study published on trends in health insurance, “it was a case of paying the money for insurance for their employees or to Uncle Sam in taxes.”

Due to that, employer healthcare and pension/retirement plans became common because companies had to pick between paying a ton of taxes or increasing benefits to attract and retain workers, and many of them chose the latter.

Defined contribution plans (e.g. 401ks) actually started under Carter when he signed the Revenue Act of 1978, which was also a tax cut. They became prolific under Reagan, but probably because he took office 3 years after (big changes like that take time to get adopted) and not because of anything he necessarily did.

Companies are moving away from pensions because they add risk to the company that 401ks don't, and employees aren't necessarily choosing jobs based on them having a pension, but based on overall benefits. And the average person is probably better off with a 401k instead provided they contribute the same amount as they would to the pension because pensions are conservatively invested (i.e. the company wants to cover its butt), whereas 401ks can be aggressively invested, meaning more growth and thus more money available at retirement time. It can be pretty dramatic too, as in 4-5% growth for pensions vs 10-12% in a 401k, because a pension needs to provide guaranteed payouts, while a 401k just needs to provide expected payouts.

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Before Nixon, you could just save money for retirement.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works -1 points 6 days ago

You still can.

That said, before the 1920s or so, a lot of people just lived with family when they got old. That changed after WW2 when people started depending more on the company than their families for retirement expenses (partially due to Social Security being enacted, and partially due to wage controls forcing companies to provide benefits to attract talent).