Since 1999, the Employer Health Benefits Survey has documented trends in employer-sponsored health insurance. Every year, private and non-federal public employers with three or more employees complete the survey. Among other topics, the survey asks firms for the premium (or full per-person cost) of their health coverage, as well as worker contributions (amount of the premium that workers pay). The graphing tool below looks at changes in premiums and worker contributions over time for covered workers at different types of firms.

Findings from the 2024 survey and supplemental information are available here. For more information on the survey methodology, see the Survey Design and Methods section. For additional questions on the Employer Health Benefits Survey or this tool, please go to the Contact Us page and choose “TOPIC: Health Costs.”

Standard Errors (SE): Like in all surveys, every estimate in the Employer Health Benefits Survey has uncertainty. Estimates for smaller, more specific groups tend to have more uncertainty. Standard Errors (SEs) are a measure of how much uncertainty there is in an estimate. Standard errors are used in statistical tests to determine whether the difference between two estimates is significant. Often, even large differences between two groups are not actually meaningfully different. Standard errors are available for each data point in the “Export Table Data” download link above.

Not Sufficient Data (NSD): In cases in which there are too few firms in a sub-population to provide a reasonable estimate and/or protect respondent confidentiality, the abbreviation NSD is used.

Weights: In order to ensure that estimates are nationally representative, firms are selected randomly and weights are applied to each firm’s data. Premium and worker contribution estimates are weighted to the number of workers covered by health benefits. These weights are adjusted to the number of employees in industry and firm size categories. For more information, see the Survey Design and Methods section.

Variable Definitions: Family coverage refers to a family of four. Firms offering self-funded or partially self-funded plans bear some or all of the financial risk of covering their employees’ medical claims directly. These firms typically contract with a third-party administrator or insurer to provide administrative services for plans. In some cases, these employer may also buy stop-loss coverage from a third-party insurer to protect the employer against having to pay for very large claims. For more information on self-funding, see Section 10. Firms offering multiple plan types are defined as self-funded or fully insured based on the characteristics of their largest plan type; however, premiums are calculated as a weighted average of up to two plan types. Therefore, the premiums of both self-funded and fully insured plans may be included in the average premium and worker contribution for some firms.

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

Firms with Many Lower-Wage or Higher-Wage Workers: Since 2013, thresholds for higher- and lower- wage workers are based on the 25th and 75th percentile of national workers’ earnings as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) (2020). Cutoffs are inflation-adjusted and rounded to the nearest thousand. From 2007 to 2012, wage cutoffs are calculated using the now-eliminated National Compensation Survey. Higher-wage firms are those where at least 35% of workers earn more than the 75th percentile cutoff. Lower-wage firms are those where at least 35% of workers earn less than the 25th percentile cutoff. To reduce the survey burden on respondents, in some years, the survey instrument only included questions on higher-wage workers.