The nation’s largest public pension plan, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), continues to be a major driver of the state’s spending growth.
In 2025, taxpayers, via government employers, including local governments, school districts, and the state, paid $23.4 billion to CalPERS, most of which went toward paying growing unfunded liabilities.
CalPERS had over $179 billion in unfunded liabilities at the end of its 2023-24 fiscal year, up from $114 billion in 2015.
While the state’s past public pension reforms have helped slow the growth of pension-related costs, lawmakers need to continue to pursue policies that fund the benefits already promised to retirees and deliver adequate retirement benefits to current public workers without incurring inordinate costs on an already strained tax base.
In this new interactive tool, CalPERS Monitor, we examine the history of legislative changes and pension reforms still impacting CalPERS and evaluate its path toward reducing its debt and fully funding the pension benefits already promised to workers.
Actuarial modeling by Reason Foundation’s Pension Integrity Project also shows the potential costs of veering away from past public pension reforms, as state lawmakers are currently considering with Assembly Bill 1383.
Reason finds that the benefit enhancements in AB 1383 would increase 30-year costs from $485 billion to $497.2 billion for CalPERS. That would be $12.1 billion in additional costs borne by taxpayers, assuming the plan hits its expected 6.8% investment return and the state doesn’t experience any major economic recessions, which is unlikely.