“We have had a 30-year experiment with requiring workers to be more responsible for saving and investing for their retirement,” said Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor of economics at the New School. “It has been a grand experiment, and it has failed.”

In the typical 401(k) plan, the employer’s matching contribution is more than just money for retirement. It also motivates employees to set aside more of their own money for old age. The more that workers save in a 401(k) plan, generally, the more “free money” they can get from their employers under the matching provisions.

Retirement policy specialists said they did not expect employees to react immediately to the loss of this incentive by stopping their own contributions. Study after study has shown that employees procrastinate when it comes to retirement-plan chores, and in this case the inertia may work, unwittingly, in their favor.

Americans, however, are facing extreme household financial pressure. President-elect Obama has said that he would support allowing withdrawals from retirement plans without penalties, which would provide short-term relief but would further undercut American’s long-term savings.

Benefits specialists said that if matching contributions continued to dwindle, fewer newly hired workers could be expected to join 401(k) plans. And employees might eventually slow or stop their contributions if the recession drags on and their own cash runs short.

“The problem is, we are heading into this serious recession, and we don’t know how long it will go on for,” said Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. “The bottom line is, people will have less money in their 401(k) plans, not just because the financial crisis has decimated their assets, but also because they will not have the employer match for some time.”

Currently, most companies that offer 401(k) plans do provide some sort of matching contributions, according to David Wray, president of the Profit Sharing/401(k) Council of America, an association of employers that provide such plans.