Texas owes $107 billion more than it has saved for retirement. Here's where the money isn't.
Data from the Texas Pension Review Board, covering fiscal years 2012–2025. All figures from official actuarial valuations filed with the PRB.
Across Texas, 99 public pension plans have promised retirement benefits to millions of public workers—teachers, firefighters, police officers, state employees. The total obligation: $514 billion. The total saved: $407 billion. The gap: $107 billion in unfunded liabilities.
That works out to roughly $3,560 for every man, woman, and child in Texas. It is money that was promised but never set aside—a bill that grows with compound interest every year it goes unpaid.
The chart below shows every plan, sized by its unfunded liability and colored by its funded ratio. Green means healthy. Red means crisis.
One plan dwarfs all others. The Teacher Retirement System of Texas—TRS—carries $64.9 billion in unfunded liabilities alone. That is 61% of the entire statewide gap, concentrated in a single fund.
TRS covers 1.9 million members: active teachers, retirees, and their beneficiaries. One in every 15 Texans depends on this fund. At 77.5% funded, it is not the worst-off plan by ratio, but the sheer scale of its shortfall makes it the most consequential.
To put it another way: If every active public school teacher in Texas wrote a personal check today, each would need to pay roughly $85,000 to close the TRS gap alone.
Over the past decade, most Texas pension plans have been treading water—or sinking. The sparklines below show the funded ratio trajectory for plans with the most data. A flat or downward line means the plan is failing to close its gap.
The most dramatic collapse: Dallas Police & Fire dropped from 78% funded to 39% over a decade—a $3.2 billion hole that deepened even after a state-mandated rescue plan. Each year the gap grows, the cost of closing it accelerates.
Dallas Police & Fire: FY2013 funded ratio was 78.1%. By FY2023, it had fallen to 39.1%—a loss of nearly 40 percentage points in a decade. The unfunded liability tripled from $1.1 billion to $3.2 billion.
Texas has 45 local fire pension plans—more than any other category. Most are governed by the Texas Local Fire Fighters' Retirement Act (TLFFRA), which gives retirees veto power over benefit reductions. Cities cannot cut benefits without retiree consent, even as funds approach insolvency.
The result: structural traps. Marshall's fire pension is 35.7% funded. Odessa: 36.4%. Plainview: 42.9%. These small-city funds face the same demographic squeeze as large systems—fewer active firefighters paying in, more retirees drawing out—but without the tax base to bridge the gap.
The exception that proves the rule: Paris Firefighters' fund went from 28.8% funded in 2020 to 105.1% in 2024. The city made a lump-sum contribution that fully closed the gap. Proof that rescue IS possible—but it takes political will and real money, not actuarial optimism.
Every pension plan must assume how much its investments will earn. Set the assumption too high, and the plan looks healthier than it is—requiring smaller contributions today in exchange for bigger shortfalls tomorrow.
The scatter plot below maps each plan's assumed investment return against its actual funded ratio. Plans in the upper-left quadrant are making aggressive assumptions while already underfunded—a dangerous combination.
When you assume 7.5% returns but get 5%, the gap compounds every year. A single percentage point of overestimation on a $200 billion asset base is a $2 billion annual miss.
A pension system works when enough active workers are paying in to support current retirees. The critical ratio: active members to retired members. When it drops below 1.0, fewer workers are paying in than retirees drawing out.
Across Texas, this ratio is compressing. Baby boomers are retiring. Younger workers are harder to recruit into public service. The math is unforgiving: every year a plan's demographic ratio worsens, the burden on each remaining active member grows.
The plans below show the funded ratio alongside their plan type. Fire and police plans are disproportionately represented among the worst-funded—small workforces supporting large retiree populations in a structural bind.
The amortization period measures how many years it will take to close the funding gap at current contribution rates. The PRB's guideline: 30 years maximum. Any plan exceeding that threshold is mathematically growing its deficit—contributions are not even covering interest.
The Texas Legislature enacted a new 30-year maximum effective September 2025. Plans exceeding it will face mandatory corrective action. But the bar chart below shows how many plans are already past that line.
100 years: Nacogdoches County Hospital District and Texarkana Firemen's plans both carry amortization periods of 100 years. At current contribution rates, these plans will not be fully funded within the lifetime of anyone alive today.
Search by plan name, jurisdiction, or type. Click any column header to sort.
| Plan Name | Type | Funded % | UAAL | Amort. Period | FY |
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