How much employees pay for healthcare, by industry

Healthcare costs are increasing, and it's unlikely that employers alone will absorb those expenses. A recent survey by financial services company Mercer estimates that employees will have to cover an additional 5.8% of their healthcare benefit costs throughout 2025. No industry is immune from rising costs of care, though some end-users suffer higher premiums than others. 

The most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, from March 2024, reveals the average monthly healthcare premiums for employers and employees across industries, including education and health services, information, manufacturing, financial activities, trade, transportation and utilities, professional and business services, construction and leisure and hospitality.

Read more: 'It will reverberate': Medicaid cuts will hurt employer health plans 

Those in the education and health services industry have the lowest average monthly healthcare premium for employees at $147.11, but the highest premium for employers at $601.51. Employees in the leisure and hospitality industries have the highest average monthly healthcare premium at $173.79, with an employer premium of $503.77.

The onus, experts say, is on employers to look for alternative solutions to break the pattern of increasing costs and increasing premiums. 

"We're in this vicious cycle where costs are rising, [employers] are shifting them to the worker, which prevents them from getting care or accessing the system, which leads to longer-term, worse healthcare needs," Ashok Subramanian, co-founder and CEO of Centivo, a health plan provider for self-funded employers, recently told EBN's Deanna Cuadra. "You're catching cancer later, diabetes is going unchecked, and then costs go up. Employers need to look for solutions they haven't considered in the past."

Read more about the average healthcare premiums across industries.

Healthcare premium costs across industries