You may need to find those old pay stubs...or you should be able to tell if there was tax deferred contributions from old W-2?

I would contact whomever was the administrator (start with fidelity, they're the most popular). It may take some digging, but the accounts could been passed to a 3rd party clearinghouse. Also check with whoever did your payroll at those hobs (ADP, paychex, etc) to see if they have records, be it paystubs, withdrawal authorization forms you may have signed, or w2 forms from previous tax years. Any retirement withdrawals would be a line item sonce they came out pre tax, typically

Did you actually contribute? This is something you would have had to setup with each employer. Check your old W2, 401k contributions are shown there.

If the amount was under $5k, likely rolled into an ira.

If the amount under $1k, they may have cut you a check

If the amount was over $5k, the employer may have a new custodian/administrator

Are you one of those “doesn’t open and read important mail” people? Or one of those “doesn’t set up mail forwarding” people?

The fact that you had not one but four previous employers state that you never made any contributions leads me to believe you never contributed.

I had one employer where you couldn't contribute to a 401k until you had been there for a year. Another employer sent me a check after I quit and I rolled it over into an ira. You can't just forget about low dollar amounts and then try and figure it out years later.

“Almost positive” vs 4 separate employers stealing his contributions.
Ima go with he didn’t setup the 401k contributions.

Could very possibly be that the company HAD a 401k, but for a number of reasons it was never setup. It’s common for new employees to not get access to full benefits (including 401k) for a while. Maybe you never stayed long enough to qualify?

Thank you!

Yea I did. I always set my 401k up even if I don't plan on staying with a company for long just in case the job ends up long term. I'm going to check all of my w2s

I for sure set them up. They even opened the accounts for me but for some reason there's no contributions in them. Maybe I wasn't with the company long enough for then to start taking it out of my check. I'm going to call then tomorrow and find out

You actually can though not recommended to go this route as it’s time consuming. The account will be closed out then the money sent to the state. You can search for it on your state’s unclaimed funds site. Same happens for uncashed paychecks etc. It goes to the state and they have to hold it for a long time. My fiancé just did this for an old (5 years) uncashed paycheck he found. Just a few hundred dollars. The state had the funds. He had a bit of money from an old 401k as well and tracked it back to his old company and got that reissued as well. If they owe you they owe you. Their debt to you doesn’t disappear just because it’s unclaimed until a ton of time has passed. Decades but depends on the state.

Call the employers and ask to talk to HR. They may not be able to help you directly, but they can give you the correct phone number to call!