You may be focused on retiring in Florida, but that doesn’tmean that if you work there, you’ll be ready to.

A report from the Pew Charitable Trusts, “Who’s In, Who’s Out: ALook at Access to Employer-Based Retirement Plans and Participationin the States,” analyzed how well employers in each state—and indifferent regions of the country—do at providing retirement plansfor their employees, and how well employees do at participating inthem.

You might be surprised at what they found.

In Florida, for instance, long regarded as theretirement haven, both employers and employees do poorly; in fact,the state finished at the absolute bottom of the country, both inthe percentage of its employers providing retirement plans to theiremployees and the percentage of employees who participate inplans.

Pew found that a major factor in how well employees are preparedfor retirement isn’t just how much people save, or where theychoose to retire.

It’s whether they have access to an employer-sponsoredretirement plan in the first place.

Last week we looked at the 10 states where employers did the bestat providing retirement plans, and employees participated at thehighest rates.

If you don’t mind some gloom, here’s a look at the 10 stateswith the worst percentage of employer-provided plans and the lowestrate of participation.

1. Florida

As mentioned above, Florida has the worst record of employersproviding retirement plans—at just 46 percent—and it does evenworse at employee participation, at 38 percent.

As they say in all the lottery commercials, you’ve got to be init to win it—and most of Florida’s employees aren’t even in thegame.

Of course, a lot can depend on how much people make; Pew alsofound that, across the country, only 32 percent of workers withwage and salary incomes of less than $25,000 have access to aretirement plan at the workplace.

It’s not altogether surprising that people trying to get by onso little find it hard to sock any of it away; just 20 percent ofthose in the lower-income group, according to Pew, participate in aplan, compared with 72 percent of more affluent workers.

2. Nevada

While 51 percent of Nevada’s employers provide retirement plans,only 39 percent of employees manage to take advantage of such aplan.

The low participation rate is made more interesting, if moredepressing, by the fact that it has the lowest take-up rate in thecountry.

The take-up rate, said Pew, is “the percentage of workers whoreported having access to a workplace retirement plan and wereparticipating in that plan.”

Nevada’s is just 76 percent; compare that with Indiana, where 90percent of those offered a plan manage to participate in thatplan.

Not surprisingly, Indiana finished in the top 10, not thebottom.

3. New Mexico

Only 49 percent of New Mexico’s employers provide a plan, andjust 41 percent of employees participate in one.

Part of the low rate could be due to the fact that the state hasthe third largest number of employees working for small companies(those with fewer than 50 employees).

Smaller firms are less likely to offer retirement plans to theiremployees—and employees in Western states are more likely to workin small firms.

New Mexico also has the largest number of Hispanic workers,whose access to a retirement plan runs 25 percentage points behindthat of white non-Hispanic workers.

4. Arizona

Another state with low plan offerings—just 52 percent ofemployers provide plans, and only 41 percent of employeesparticipate in a plan—Arizona has the fourth largest concentrationof Hispanic workers in the country.

In addition, it—along with New Mexico—is in the top 10 stateswith the highest percentage of employees in the leisure and hospitality industry,which does a pretty poor job of providing its employees withretirement benefits.

5. Texas

An even 50 percent of Texas employers offer a retirement plan,but that leaves half Texas’s employees without one.

And only 42 percent of Texas workers participate in a plan.

Then there’s the issue of poor access to plans forHispanics.

Not only are more than a third of the full-time private-sectorworkers in Texas Hispanic (nationwide the figure is 16 percent),but while 63 percent of white non-Hispanic workers had access to anemployer-sponsored retirement plan, only 38 percent of Hispanicworkers said they had access to one.

6. Louisiana

While 53 percent of Louisiana’s employers offer a plan, just 44percent of Louisianans report participating in one.

Pay is likely a major factor here, since Louisiana has thesecond-highest percentage of workers with less than $25,000 inannual wage and salary income.

Only Arkansas has a larger percentage of workers bringing insuch low pay.

According to Pew, salary can be an indicator of “job quality,”with low-salary jobs “tend[ing] to be in sectors where employersare less likely to offer pensions or retirement savings plans.”

7. California

Fifty-one percent of California’s employers offer retirementplans, and 44 percent of the state’s workers report participatingin a plan.

While it might be surprising to find that a state known for manyprogressive actions has such a low penetration rate of retirementplans, California has the second-largest population of Hispanicworkers in the country.

In addition to the fact that Hispanic workers have less accessto retirement plans, there’s also a cultural factor toconsider.

The Pew report said that “research suggests that some Hispanicsare reluctant to participate in retirement savings programs becauseof uncertainty about the accessibility of funds if they retire inanother country.”

8. Georgia

A greater percentage of Georgia’s employers—53 percent—offertheir employees access to a retirement plan.

And 45 percent of the state’s employees participate in one. Andthe state ranks either a little above or a little below the medianin most of Pew’s rating categories.

But somehow that hasn’t translated to providing more of itsworkers with a means to retire—after all, less than half of itspeople participate in an employer-sponsored plan.

So it’s probably a good thing that, at least, Georgia is one ofthe 10 most tax-friendly states forretirement; it will make those small balances go a bit further.

9. Arkansas

Fifty-five percent of the state’s employers say they providetheir employees with a retirement plan, and 45 percent of itsemployees say they participate in one.

But that doesn’t mean everything’s a natural in the NaturalState; in fact, capital city Little Rock was ranked as one of the10 worst places to retire byBankrate.com, with high taxes just one way for the state to take abite out of whatever retirement money people have managed tosave.

In addition, 28 percent of the state’s employees have an annualwage and salary income of less than $25,000, which makes it toughto put away anything for the future.

The state also has the six-largest percentage of workers underage 30.

Pew said that younger workers frequently have a tough time eventhinking about saving for retirement when there are so many otherfinancial claims on their money—student loan debt inparticular.

10. New Jersey

It might be surprising in a state considered so metropolitan,but New Jersey made the bottom 10 with 53 percent of its employersproviding a retirement plan and 47 percent of its employeesparticipating in one.

But retirement isn’t one of the state’s major priorities—atleast not for its governor, Chris Christie, who conditionally vetoed a bill from thestate legislature that would have mandated a new retirement programfor employers who don’t currently provide one.

Instead, Christie amended the bill to create a marketplace forprivate-sector providers that will not require participation, butwill only promote it.

New Jersey is also known—by no less an authority thanMoody’s—for having the lowest pension funding for state plansof any in the country. So perhaps it’s not a surprise afterall.