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Mississippi

Overview

The Public Employees' Retirement System of Mississippi (PERS), a governmental defined benefit pension plan qualified under Section 401(a) of the Internal Revenue Code, is the retirement system for nearly all non-federal public employees in the state including employees of the state, public school districts, municipalities, counties, community colleges, state universities, and such other public entities as libraries and water districts.

Additional programs administered by PERS for the benefit of its members and the state include the Supplemental Legislative Retirement Plan (SLRP), the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol Retirement System (MHSPRS), the Institutions of Higher Learning Optional Retirement Plan (ORP), Fire and Police Disability and Relief Funds and General Municipal Retirement Systems (MRS) for employees of 17 cities, the Mississippi Deferred Compensation Plan, and the PERS Retiree Insurance Program.

Plan Design

Defined benefit plans serve as the primary retirement benefit for substantially all public employees in Mississippi.

According to the US Government Accountability Office, 97 percent of employees of state and local government in Mississippi participate in Social Security.

Access plan design detail

Authorizing Statutes and Board Structure

MS Code § 25-11-101 establishes the Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi. MS Code § 25-11-15 establishes the PERS Board of Trustees, which consists of 10 members.

Details regarding the composition of these and other retirement boards is accessible via the Retirement and Investment Board Characteristics search tool located at the bottom of this page.

Fiduciary Duty/Prudence Standard

The board, the executive director and employees shall discharge their duties with respect to the investments of the system solely for the interest of the system with the care, skill, prudence and diligence under the circumstances then prevailing that a prudent investor acting in a like capacity and familiar with such matters would use in the conduct of an enterprise of a like character and with like aims, including diversifying the investments of the system so as to minimize the risk of large losses, unless under the circumstances it is clearly prudent not to do so.
 
Among other restrictions specified in MS Code § 25-11-121(1)(l):
 
  • (i) The maximum investments in stocks shall not exceed eighty percent (80%) of the total book value of the total investment fund of the system;
  • (ii) The stock of such corporation shall:
    • 1. Be listed on a national stock exchange; or
    • 2. Be traded in the over-the-counter market;
  • (iii) The outstanding shares of such corporation shall have a total market value of not less than Fifty Million Dollars ($50,000,000.00);
  • (iv) The amount of investment in any one (1) corporation shall not exceed three percent (3%) of the book value of the assets of the system;
  • (v) The shares of any one (1) corporation owned by the system shall not exceed five percent (5%) of that corporation's outstanding stock.

Legal Protections of Retirement Benefits

No explicit constitutional protection for public pension benefits, but courts protect contractual pension rights. Article 3, §16 of the Mississippi Constitution prohibits laws impairing the obligation of contracts. Note that Article 15, §273 prevents the use of the initiative process to amend or repeal the state retirement system. Public Employees' Retirement System v. Porter, 763 So.2d 845 (Miss. 2000)(holding that statute mandating that pre-retirement death benefits go to a surviving spouse rather than named beneficiary, was an unconstitutional impairment of contract). (MS CONST., Article 15, §273; Article 3, §16) Source: Robert Klausner, Esq., State Constitutional Protections for Public Sector Retirement Benefits

See also the following search tools:

Retirement System Account Interest Policies Economic Actuarial Assumptions Retirement and Investment Board Characteristics
Information about interest rates applied to account balances of inactive plan participants Assumed rates of investment return and inflation Composition and characteristics of public retirement and investment oversight boards
Mortality Assumptions Plan Design Features Post-retirement Employment Policies
Public retirement system actuarial assumptions for mortality Numerous elements of retirement plan design Policies governing return-to-work for retirement system annuitants

More Data

Flag of Mississippi (April 23, 1894)

Population (2025) 2,954,160

Mississippi public pension statistics,
per U.S. Census Bureau as of FY 2025

Assets

$37.7 billion

Active Members

145,724

Annuitants

122,226

Benefits Paid

$3.7 billion

Employee Contributions

$707.7 million

Employer Contributions

$1.5 billion

Systems

One state system that accounts for 100 percent of assets and public pension plan participants in the state. 

More Data

Other Resources


 


Become A Member

Becoming a member of NASRA offers a unique opportunity to join a community committed to the sound, efficient, and innovative stewardship of public retirement systems. Membership connects you with a network of professionals and experts, providing valuable insights into managing public retirement systems with a focus on sustainability and risk-averse strategies.

By joining NASRA, you gain the tools and resources to enhance the management of public retirement systems, ensuring their long-term success and reliability for generations to come.

What's New at NASRA: Government Spending Issue Brief

NASRA’s March 2026 update on government spending makes a basic but important point: public pension benefits are not paid out of a government’s day-to-day operating budget. They are paid from trust funds that employees and employers contribute to during an employee’s working years. Those trusts distribute more than $400 billion each year to retirees and beneficiaries in communities across the country. On a national basis, employer contributions to pension trusts in FY 2023 equaled 5.16 percent of direct general spending by state and local governments, which shows that pension contributions remain a limited share of overall public spending even though the level varies from one state to another. 
The brief also shows that pension costs should be viewed in the context of the changes governments have made over the past 15 years to strengthen plan funding. Following the 2008–09 market decline, nearly every state and many local governments adjusted contributions, benefits, or both to improve pension sustainability. More recent data show that employer contributions increased from FY 2022 to FY 2023, but pension spending as a share of total government spending remained broadly stable. The updated brief provides FY 2023 figures and also projects the aggregate pension spending rate for FY 2024, offering a useful snapshot of both current costs and the longer funding trend.