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American workers now put more money into pension and retirement savings plans sponsored by their employers than the companies themselves do.

That remarkable milestone, determined by pension researchers reviewing the most recent data, shows just how far companies have moved away from the system of decades past, in which employers alone financed the retirement savings of their workers, and toward 401(k) and similar retirement plans financed mostly by workers.

The milestone is all the more remarkable because 401(k)'s and similar retirement accounts were never intended to be the main way for an employee to save for retirement. They were originally expected merely to supplement company-financed pension plans.

The new-style plans lack the protections of the old pension plans, like a guaranteed benefit and federal insurance to protect retirees if the company goes bankrupt.

The huge losses on retirement savings of workers at Enron and other troubled companies have focused attention on the vulnerability of the new retirement accounts.

Yet most American workers are optimistic about their financial prospects in retirement, confident they will have enough money to live comfortably, according to a survey released in February by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

These workers are optimistic even though Americans generally are notoriously weak savers, with many lacking financial education. While corporations and the financial industry have shifted the burden to employees, they have far to go in adequately educating the public about its responsibilities in paying and planning for retirement.

"We have to look at the issues from a broad point of view, one that encourages saving and which reduces the risk on the saver," said William V. Roth, the former United States senator from Delaware who was a leading Republican voice on pension and retirement issues. "It's a real concern. We want people to reach their so-called golden years with adequate funds to live comfortably."

Even people who appear headed toward a comfortable retirement may find themselves vulnerable. Last fall, Wade Robert was counting down to a planned early retirement in February of this year after 15 years as a vice president of United Technologies near Washington. Then the events of Sept. 11 sent stock prices into a tailspin. Mr. Robert found that about half of the value of his 401(k) account was in United Technologies stock and could not be moved to other investments because of company restrictions.

Unlike many Enron workers, Mr. Robert was also covered by a traditional pension plan, which enabled him to retire as planned in February at age 57. But only 17 percent of American workers have both types of plans, and the portion is likely to decline as fewer companies provide traditional pensions.

To even the most astute participants, the current pension system is a bewildering array of regulations and options for companies and employees. Mr. Roth, for example, said he had to consult a pension expert after his retirement from the Senate to help figure out his pension plan.

Congress and the administration have begun discussing possible changes in retirement policy, and two partisan bills are winding their way through Congress. Few people in Washington are yet predicting new programs as radical as those that led to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the 1974 law known as Erisa that created a government-sponsored insurance program for pension plans, but that does not mean that change will not come in waves over the next several years.

It is worth noting that 11 years passed from the time that the Studebaker Car Company jolted the system by terminating its employee pension program in 1963 until Congress, after dozens of false starts, finally passed Erisa.

"Retirement policy has really come to the forefront thanks to Enron, and I think it will stay there for a while," said Eric Lofgren, global director of the benefits consulting group for Watson Wyatt, the giant pension adviser. "I would be surprised if there was not a series of legislative moves over the next decade, as we learn what works and what doesn't."

The changes in the American pension system stem from familiar causes. In the 1950's and 1960's, stable jobs and long tenure at a single company were the norm, and companies found it advantageous to build pension plans that offered workers a fixed payout upon retirement. The payout in those programs, known as a defined benefit, was derived from a formula based on a worker's years of service and his average salary in the last few years, with most of the benefits accruing in the final years before retirement.

That changed in the last quarter- century, as workers and their families became much more mobile, changing jobs and regions of the country more frequently. Demand grew for retirement plans that could move with an employee and that accumulated a larger portion of benefits initially, rather than being dependent on the later years of a long career of service.

Corporations embraced the newer plans, which allowed them to make upfront contributions to a retirement account. The newer plans, known as defined contribution programs, shifted to employees the burden of investing the money to cover their living expenses at retirement, thereby saving companies the cost of managing that money over an employee's entire life, as well as the cost of premiums for federal pension insurance.

Companies also found that they could trim costs further by cutting the amount they contributed. Now, on average, companies put up less than 50 cents for every dollar set aside by employees, and many companies make their contributions in the form of their own shares, rather than cash.

Companies have not had to work hard to get employees to embrace the new plans. All they had to do was point to the superior long-term returns of the stock market, implicitly promising employees greater benefits at retirement than they could expect from a traditional pension. No small factor in bolstering the popularity of the newer plans was the fact that just as the first 401(k) accounts appeared in 1982, the stock market began an 18-year bull run.

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