24% of U.S. workers stay in unwanted jobs for health insurance

About 24% of U.S. employees stayed in unwanted jobs just for health insurance, a Wednesday report found, underscoring how employer-tied coverage can trap workers long after pay, hours or conditions have stopped working. The rise from 16% in 2021 points to a deeper kind of job lock: people weighing career moves against the risk of losing care, prescriptions and the household budget cushion that comes with an employer plan. That pressure reaches beyond individual choices and into the broader labor market, where it can suppress mobility, weaken bargaining power and make entrepreneurship harder to take on.

In May 2021, West Health and Gallup found that 16% of U.S. adult workers, about 1 in 6, stayed in unwanted jobs because they feared losing health benefits. West Health also said Black workers were 50% more likely than White workers to remain in those jobs, showing how employer-based insurance can deepen existing racial gaps in economic freedom and household security.

The scale of the system helps explain why the problem persists. KFF’s 2024 Employer Health Benefits Survey said employer-sponsored insurance covered 154 million nonelderly people, and the average annual premium for single coverage reached $8,951 in 2024. For workers deciding whether to quit, switch industries or strike out on their own, that kind of coverage can function less like a benefit than a lock on the door.

The affordability strain has not eased. A 2025 Gallup-West Health survey found 11% of U.S. adults were unable to pay for needed healthcare, and Gallup said the inability to pay for care and medicine had hit a new high. West Health-Gallup’s Center on Healthcare has focused on how Americans experience care through cost, quality and access, a framework that places job lock inside a wider crisis of medical affordability.

The report lands at a time when policymakers are again being forced to confront the link between employment and insurance. As long as workers fear losing coverage when they leave, job changes will carry a hidden penalty, and that penalty keeps distorting pay negotiations, career moves and the health policy debate itself.