Pooled Employer Plans: Big Plans for Small Businesses

Document 2025-14281 is a Proposed Rule published by the Department of Labor in the Federal Register on July 29, 2025. This document contains limited interpretive guidance to help small employers select high-quality, low-cost "pooled employer plans" or "PEPs." This document also solicits information about prevailing pooled employer plan market practices. The Department will consider the responses as part of a process aimed at developing a potential regulatory safe harbor or safe harbors that comprehensively encourage market participants to offer and employers to join such plans. These efforts, taken pursuant to President Trump's January 20, 2025, Memorandum titled "Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis," are designed to reduce investment costs for workers saving for their retirement, thereby improving their lives. These efforts also will help small employers provide more attractive benefits to potential hires, drawing discouraged workers into the labor force. View the original at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/07/29/2025-14281/pooled-employer-plans-big-plans-for-small-businesses.

No. Document 2025-14281 is not classified as economically significant under Executive Order 12866. Economically significant rules require OIRA review and are estimated to have impacts of $100 million or more per year.