You may be focused on retiringin Florida, but that doesn’t mean that if you work there,you’ll be ready to.

A report from the Pew Charitable Trusts, “Who’s In, Who’s Out: A Look at Accessto Employer-Based Retirement Plans and Participation in theStates,” 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 the retirement haven,both employers and employees do poorly; in fact, the state finishedat the absolute bottom of the country, both in the percentage ofits employers providing retirement plans to their employees and thepercentage of employees who participate in plans.

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.

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% — and it does even worseat employee participation, at 38%.

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% of workers with wage andsalary incomes of less than $25,000 have access to a retirementplan 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% of those inthe lower-income group, according to Pew, participate in a plan,compared with 72% of more affluent workers.

2. Nevada

While 51% of Nevada’s employers provide retirement plans, only39% of employees manage to take advantage of such a plan.

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

Nevada’s is just 76%; compare that with Indiana, where 90% ofthose offered a plan manage to participate in that plan.

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

3. New Mexico

Only 49% of New Mexico’s employers provide a plan, and just 41%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% of employersprovide plans, and only 41% of employees participate in a plan —Arizona has the fourth largest concentration of Hispanic workers inthe country.

In addition, it — along with New Mexico — is in the top 10states with the highest percentage of employees in the leisure andhospitality industry, which does a pretty poor job of providing itsemployees with retirement benefits.

5. Texas

An even 50% of Texas employers offer a retirement plan, but thatleaves half Texas’s employees without one.

And only 42% 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%), but while63% of white non-Hispanic workers had access to anemployer-sponsored retirement plan, only 38% of Hispanic workerssaid they had access to one.

6. Louisiana

While 53% of Louisiana’s employers offer a plan, just 44% ofLouisianans 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% of the state’s workers report participating in aplan.

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% — offer theiremployees access to a retirement plan.

And 45% of the state’s employees participate in one. And thestate ranks either a little above or a little below the median inmost 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 for retirement; it will make thosesmall 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% of its employeessay 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 by Bankrate.com, with high taxes just oneway for the state to take a bite out of whatever retirement moneypeople have managed to save.

In addition, 28% of the state’s employees have an annual wageand salary income of less than $25,000, which makes it tough to putaway 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% of its employersproviding a retirement plan and 47% of its employees participatingin one.

But retirement isn’t one of the state’s major priorities — atleast not for its governor, Chris Christie, who conditionallyvetoed a bill from the state legislature that would have mandated anew retirement program for employers who don’t currently provideone.

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 than Moody’s— for having the lowest pension funding for state plans of any inthe country. So perhaps it’s not a surprise after all.