According to a new accounting rule that would take effect next year, US pensions were only 60% funded in 2012. The actual funded level was reported at 73%, based on a report of Boston College's Center for Retirement Research.

The new rule by the Government Accounting Standard Board would require net pension liability to appear on financial statements of state and local governments. What the new accounting rule would do was to state as underfunded the pensions of municipal workers such as teachers, police, and firefigthers.

In addition, the new rules also entailed pension funds with insufficient assets to pay for their obligations to use lower rates of return on investments. In effect, this would move the pension funds' projected rates closer to 20-year AA-or-higher municipal bonds.

On a positive note, the report said that "while the shift in GASB standards will make monitoring funding more difficult, the public pension landscape should improve over the next few years if financial markets do not collapse again."