ESOP Distributions Delivered $141.8 Billion to Workers From 2009 to 2024

Employee stock ownership plans distributed $141.8 billion to workers and beneficiaries from 2009 through 2024, according to a new study. The total shifts attention from wealth still held in plans to money that has already reached participants—through retirement, job changes, diversification, or a plan ending.

Researchers assembled approximately 100,000 Form 5500 filings to produce the cumulative estimate. Steve Storkan, executive director of the Employee Ownership Expansion Network (EOX), authored the report, More Than What Remains: Measuring the Wealth ESOPs Have Already Delivered. Aaron Dean, founder and CEO of Deanalytics, conducted the research and data analysis and developed the software and dashboard used to organize the filings. The researchers say this is the first national calculation of distributions accumulated across the full 16-year period.

Distributions include payouts when plans end

Approximately $113.1 billion of the total came from active ESOPs during normal operations. Another approximately $28.7 billion—roughly 20 percent—came from plans entering termination, often after a company sale or change in ownership. That breakdown matters: a count of assets currently held in plans can miss wealth already paid out, while a count of active plans alone can obscure how much activity takes place as firms enter or leave employee ownership.

The report illustrates the scale of a plan winding down with Dynetics, an employee-owned company based in Huntsville, Alabama, that Leidos acquired in 2020. As the Dynetics ESOP was wound down, approximately $977 million was distributed to roughly 2,260 participants across 2019 and 2020. The report includes five other company case studies showing how large payouts can occur when ownership changes.

These figures describe money distributed over time, not a single year’s payout or the balance currently held by participants. They also don’t show how much any one worker received. Individual outcomes depend on plan participation and the circumstances of each distribution. The aggregate total is useful for measuring the scale of payouts; it cannot, by itself, describe how those payouts were spread among workers or what participants did with the money.

Plan counts show movement beneath the national total

From 2009 through 2024, the study identified 3,943 new ESOPs and 3,839 plans entering termination. New formations exceeded terminations in every year from 2016 through 2024. The two totals are close across the full period, but that comparison shouldn’t be read as proof that employee ownership was static: companies formed plans while others ended them, and a modest net change can conceal substantial movement in both directions.

The report also breaks out distributions, contributions, formations, and terminations by state, using the plan sponsor’s headquarters as the location measure. That gives readers a way to compare activity associated with different states, but it doesn’t identify where participants who received distributions live. A plan’s headquarters and the homes of its workers may be in different places.

Storkan said the state-level figures can help community leaders understand the wealth associated with employee-owned companies in their areas. The same breakdown gives business owners and their advisers another reference point when discussing ownership succession, though the data is a measure of past distributions rather than a projection of what a future plan might pay.

Succession planning is part of the case

For advisers working with business owners, the findings add an economic measure to a conversation often shaped by tax treatment and transaction structure. ESOP distributions can reach employees when they retire, but the Dynetics example shows that a change in ownership can also trigger substantial payouts at other points. That flexibility may be relevant when owners weigh succession options, while the specific outcome depends on each company and its plan.

Dean’s own experience gives the study a personal dimension. Before founding Deanalytics, he spent five years at an employee-owned company. He said his eventual distribution helped him put his finances in order and gave him resources to start the firm. His account illustrates one possible use of a payout; it doesn’t establish what participants generally receive or how they use the money.

Storkan argues that too few business owners seriously consider employee ownership and that too few advisers understand the wealth such companies have already distributed. The study gives them a cumulative figure to bring into that discussion. Whether it changes a succession decision will depend on a business owner’s priorities, the company’s circumstances, and the available alternatives.

Retirement readiness adds context

The total arrives amid concern about workers’ ability to prepare for retirement. Research cited by InvestmentNews put median total household retirement savings among US workers surveyed in late 2025 at $78,000. That figure and the ESOP study measure different things: one describes reported household savings, while the other totals distributions paid by plans over 16 years. They offer context for why payouts can matter to workers, but they aren’t directly comparable measures of retirement security.

The report’s central contribution is a wider view of ESOP activity: it counts wealth that has left plans as well as the assets that remain. Its $141.8 billion estimate captures what the researchers measured in filings from 2009 through 2024; future totals will depend on how many companies form plans, how plans perform, and when participants receive distributions. The full report and executive summary are available from EOX.