Mississippi

Retirees Removed from the Rolls

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For readers that are just joining us now, what we are doing is a state by state analysis of how many public service employees in the retirement system have potentially died in the last 10 years. The aim is to compare pre and post pandemic numbers to see if there are any patterns. What we have learned is that actuarial retirement reports will often only hint at those that have died in tables that refer to members “removed from the rolls”. Other clues are given in references to “death refunds” and “survivor benefits”, but a close examination of the entire document is advised.

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PERS of Mississippi

2024 ANNUAL COMPREHENSIVE FINANCIAL REPORT

A Component Unit of the State of Mississippi | Fiscal Year Ended June 30

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page 123 (Schedule of Retirants Added to & Removed from Rolls)

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In this fiscal year report we will again fabricate calendar years for the important pandemic events of 2020, 2021 and 2022 by taking 50% from one fiscal year and adding it to 50% of the next. It is a tricky paste together, and you have to pay attention to how the fiscal years are displayed in the table. My take is that the first column says the fiscal year ended on the date displayed. This would make sense since the cover of the report says the fiscal year ends on June 30th:

And to be clear, Google AI says this about how fiscal years are named:

“A fiscal year is typically named by its end date, not its start date. For example, a fiscal year that runs from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, is called Fiscal Year 2025.”

Therefore, we are not given the fiscal year info for 2024 in this table for some reason - even though this is the FY2024 report … hmmm. ( I may have to go back a few posts and revise some numbers, in case I didn't catch that wrinkle! )

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Okay then, this is what we get.

2020 … the first pandemic year without any vaccine had 3,916 removed from the rolls.

2021 … the pandemic year with the EUA vaccines had 4,277 removed from the rolls.

2022 … the pandemic year that had fully FDA approved vaccines had 4,239 removed from the rolls.

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page 130 (Benefit & Refund Payments by Type - Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi)

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Look at the “Survivor” column and see what happens FY2020 through FY2023. The figures are in the thousands, so add three zeroes to the end of all those numbers. That is a five-fold increase from FY2019 to FY2020!

And it does not slow down … FY2023 is the biggest yet.

This table also has a last column for “Death Refunds that shows notably larger numbers for FY2021 and FY2022 compared to the other entries.

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Let’s ask Google AI about the significance of “survivor benefits”:

“In an annual retirement report, "survivor benefit" typically refers to a monthly payment or lump sum payment provided to a beneficiary of a deceased employee or retiree, providing income or a financial resource after their death. This benefit is often part of a retirement plan's death benefit provisions, ensuring financial support for eligible dependents.”

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page 131 (Benefit & Refund Payments by Type - Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol Retirement System)

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So this is the first time I have noticed such a significant number in a subgroup of one of these reports. As you can see, this is a table that refers to just the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol. Again, the numbers here are in the thousands, so add three zeroes to the end of those benefit figures.

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page 132 (Benefit & Refund Payments by Type - Supplemental Legislative Retirement Plan)

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As you can see, this is a table that refers to just the Supplemental Legislative members. Again, the numbers here are in the thousands, so add three zeroes to the end of those survivor benefit figures.

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I am finding that each state’s report is very different from the next. This report from Mississippi seems to have a lot of info about “survivors benefits”. Apart from one table that gives a clue to some increased “death refunds”, we are mostly left in the dark as to where the cause of all these massively increased survivor payouts is coming from. In my layperson opinion, the “removed from rolls” numbers don’t seem proportional to the very large jumps in those survivor benefits.

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