Private-sector employers in the United States are facing much higher health insurance costs but struggling to hold their benefits packages together.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics painted that picture today in a new batch of National Compensation Survey employee benefits data.
The average cost of health benefits for a single employee at a private-sector employer rose 7.4% between 2025 and 2026, to $633.77, according to the survey report.
But those private-sector employers continued to offer health benefits to 72% of employees, with the offer rate falling only slightly, from 73%, the year before.
Employers continued to cover 80% of the cost of the health benefits for a single employee, just as they did in 2024 and 2025.
Costs and trends were similar, but higher, at state and local government employers: They continued to offer health benefits to 89% of employees, and the average cost of single-employee health benefits at those employers increased 7.1%, to $652.56.
What it means: The new BLS benefits survey data release confirms what executives at big, publicly traded insurance brokers and insurance companies have been saying in calls with investors and securities analysts: The kinds of employers that typically offer good benefits have been trying to keep their benefits offers roughly the same.
Some employers may be cutting benefits offers because of factors such as rising interest rates and the rising cost of supplies, but the number of workers with benefits could fall more slowly than the number of employers offering benefits, because the employers holding benefits steady tend to be bigger than the employers pulling back.
Researchers at the Boston College Center for Retirement Research reported recently, for example, that only 49% of small and medium-sized U.S. businesses offer retirement plans, but the new BLS data release shows that the percentage of all U.S. private-sector workers with access to defined contribution retirement plans held steady at 70%.
The percentage with access to paid sick leave increased slightly, to 81%, from 80%.
The survey: The BLS survey team bases its data on a survey of 16,020 civilian employers, including 14,420 private-sector employers and 1,600 state and local government employers.
About 6,670 of the civilian employers polled and 1,420 of the government employers polled responded to the survey.
The data: The government makes the BLS benefits survey data available for free to all, without copyright restrictions, and the full collection goes into much more detail than the tables included with the press release announcing the publication of the data.
Program managers break the data down in many different ways, including by region, wage level, and full-time or part-time status.
Employers provide access to health benefits for 87% of full-time civilian workers, for example, but to only 24% of part-time workers.
The percentage of all full-time civilian workers offered health benefits fell from 89% in 2025, and the percentage of all part-time workers offered health benefits fell from 25%.