Katherine Sullivan

While that's up from prior years, it still means a lot of Americans don't have the tools they need to save for retirement.

President Trump has floated the idea of providing retirement plans to these workers, but he gave few details of the plan.

Lots of big companies offer retirement savings plans, but small businesses don't have the bandwidth to offer matching plans for their employees, leaving those workers at a disadvantage.

Dozens of other countries require companies to provide retirement plans for their employees.

After the break, we look at new uncertainties coming for the future of our retirement system.

There's a discussion going on now about what kinds of investments can go into a 401 .

Last August, President Trump signed an executive order allowing 401 s to invest in, quote, alternative assets.

That's things like private equity, real estate debt and cryptocurrency.

According to a poll conducted on behalf of The Wall Street Journal, only about 10 percent of Americans are looking for more investment offerings in their 401 s. Anne Targeson wrote about this.

Can you explain that to me?

The White House told me the order levels the playing field for individual investors who want access to potentially lucrative private and alternative investments and is, quote, not an endorsement of any particular asset class.

A lot of the lobbying for this is coming from the private equity industry.

Private equity is looking for access to the roughly $10 trillion currently invested in 401 plans.

It would be a lot more business for the sector.

But it's unclear whether 401 administrators will be willing to offer these alternative assets.

Private equity funds generally come with much higher fees than publicly traded assets.

Private markets also carry more risk for investors.

Some experts think placing these assets in 401ks is too risky.

Former Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein told the Wall Street Journal about what he sees as a short-sighted decision by the private equity industry.

There's another potential problem coming in the future, but this one has to do with Social Security.