For the 100 largest public-employee pension systems in the country, assets (cash and investments) totaled $3,865.0 billion in the third quarter of 2018, increasing by 1.4 percent from the 2018 second-quarter-level of $3,811.2 billion. However, compared to the same quarter in 2017, assets for these major public-pension systems increased 4.9 percent from $3,685.4 billion. The main driver of the slight quarterly increase in assets is low earnings on investments, which totaled $77.6 billion during the third quarter of 2018. Earnings on investments is a critical contributor to the sustainability of pension plans. In the third quarter of 2018, it slightly outpaced the deficit between contributions and benefits paid out (see Figure 1). The summary highlights the major asset categories (equities, debt instruments, and cash equivalents) and does not reflect all of the categories published for the Quarterly Survey of Public Pensions. Please see the complete data sets at <www.census.gov/programs-surveys /qspp.html> for further detail.