Since its inception in 1999, the Employer Health Benefits Survey has tracked trends in employer-sponsored health insurance. Each year, private and non-federal public employers with three or more employees participate in the survey. Among various topics, the survey inquires about the premium (or total per-person cost) of their health coverage and the contributions made by workers (the portion of the premium paid by employees). The graphing tool below illustrates the changes in premiums and worker contributions over time for covered workers across different types of employers.

The findings from the 2024 survey, along with supplementary information, can be accessed here. For further details regarding the survey methodology, please refer to the Survey Design and Methods section. If you have additional questions concerning the Employer Health Benefits Survey or this tool, please visit the Contact Us page and select “TOPIC: Health Costs.”

Standard Errors (SE): Like all surveys, every estimate within the Employer Health Benefits Survey carries a degree of uncertainty. Estimates for smaller or more targeted groups generally exhibit higher uncertainty. Standard Errors (SEs) quantify the uncertainty surrounding an estimate. They are utilized in statistical tests to assess if the difference between two estimates is significant. Frequently, even considerable discrepancies between two groups may not be statistically significant. Standard errors are provided for each data point in the “Export Table Data” download link above.

Not Sufficient Data (NSD): The abbreviation NSD is employed when there are insufficient firms in a sub-population to yield a reasonable estimate and/or safeguard respondent confidentiality.

Weights: To guarantee that estimates are representative at the national level, firms are selected randomly and weights are assigned to each firm’s data. Premium and worker contribution estimates are weighted according to the number of workers covered by health benefits. These weights are further adjusted based on the number of employees within specific industry and firm size categories. For more insights, please check the Survey Design and Methods section.

Variable Definitions: Family coverage refers to a household of four. Firms that offer self-funded or partially self-funded plans assume some or all of the financial risk associated with covering their employees’ medical claims directly. These employers typically contract with a third-party administrator or insurer for administrative services for these plans. In certain instances, these employers may also purchase stop-loss insurance from a third-party insurer to mitigate the risk of incurring very large claims. For more information on self-funding, see Section 10. Firms that provide various plan types are categorized as self-funded or fully insured based on the attributes of their largest plan type; however, premiums are calculated as a weighted average of up to two plan types. Consequently, the premiums from both self-funded and fully insured plans may be included in the average premium and worker contribution for certain firms.

Industry classifications are determined based on a firm’s primary Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code as established by Dun and Bradstreet. A firm’s region is ascertained by the location of its primary establishment according to the U.S. Census Bureau definitions. Ownership classifications are reported by the survey respondent.

Firms with a Significant Proportion of Lower-Wage or Higher-Wage Workers: Since 2013, the thresholds for higher- and lower-wage workers are based on the 25th and 75th percentiles of national worker earnings as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) (2020). These cutoffs are adjusted for inflation and rounded to the nearest thousand. From 2007 to 2012, wage thresholds were derived using the now-defunct National Compensation Survey. Higher-wage firms are defined as those where at least 35% of workers earn above the 75th percentile cutoff. Conversely, lower-wage firms are those where at least 35% of workers earn below the 25th percentile cutoff. To minimize the survey burden on respondents, certain years only included questions concerning higher-wage workers.