The Indicator from Planet Money - I'm just here for the health benefits

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Dependable health insurance is keeping more people in their jobs. Rising health costs don't help. Today we look at the repercussions this kind of job lock has on the wider economy. Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.Your Next Listen — The ghosts of Obamacare past, present and future Connect with The Indicator — Sign up for The Indicator’s weekly newsletter!— Buy the Planet Money book— Find our socials, YouTube and more!— For sponsor-free episodes, subscribe to NPR+Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

NPR. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Adrian Ma. And joining me today from behind the producer's curtain is Angel Keras. Hello. It is so bright in here without the producer curtains. Yes, put on your safety goggles because it is bright in here. We are about to shine a light on the U.S. job numbers.

It's Jobs Friday. That's right. That's the day of the month where we look at the latest government jobs report. and we check in and see how American workers are doing. This month's jobs report was a bit of a shocker. The overall economy lost 23,000 jobs, worse than economists were expecting. And the numbers for May and June were actually revised downwards by about 100,000 jobs. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate ticked down slightly to 4.1%,

but only because about 260,000 people stopped looking for a job. So the job market definitely seems to be cooling off. Yeah, and you know, Adrian, on jobs Fridays, we talk about how having a job is good, but the thing we don't talk about sometimes, having a job sucks. I mean, I'm joking, of course, you know, except for the time I worked for a restaurant that sold Popeye's chicken as its own. We need to make that its own episode. One day. But something that is not to be joked about, Adrian, dreams.

Sometimes we can't chase those in the economy when we stay at a job solely because we need the health benefits. I've been trying to move to something else or even do my own, my own trade. but, you know, the health insurance kind of definitely restricts the ability to say, hey, I'm going to, you know, do what you love type thing. This is Richard Leoners. He has spent 14 years at his current job as a product manager for a consumer electronics company. It's not exactly because he wanted to do. If you're not enjoying what you're doing or really not passionate about it, you should be able to quit and start something else. But that's just not realistic.

Today on the show, job lock. roughly half of Americans would leave their job tomorrow if they didn't need the money. And here in the USA, we have a unique type of job lock. Many people would leave their jobs tomorrow if they didn't need the health benefits. Yeah, and I mean, by doing this, workers pass up on doing things like joining a startup, starting a startup, even doing a career change, because they just can't afford to lose that sweet, sweet employer-provided health insurance. So what are the economic consequences, the human consequences? We talked to a health policy expert in someone who is living the job lock reality. Richard Leonors lives in New Jersey.

He's spent the past 14 years as a director of product management for a consumer electronics company. And he's also spent nearly half his 50-ish years of life in that business overall. That's a lot of experience. A lot of skills accrued exactly the kind of worker the economy wants. And to top it off, he had sketches for a business if he ever gets the chance to strike out on his own. I enjoy, you know, there's some sort of retail maybe, electronics type thing, music-related. So something that kind of takes more of that creative element to either open up a store or a training center or teaching or things like that.

He's got one customer in me. And he even stashed away some money to chase this idea. I've been enough, I think, in savings to kind of make it worthwhile for maybe six, seven months to try something and push at it. But after that, then it would be a struggle. You know, how do you pay for the health insurance side of things? For Richard, leaving his job means leaving his health insurance. And health benefit-related job lock, like Richards, is on the rise.

A recent Gallup survey found that around 23 million adults are in this type of job lock. That's about one in four workers. And get this, about five years ago, it was only about 16% of workers surveyed who said they feel like they can't leave their job because they'd lose their health insurance. So we called up Larry Leavitt and asked of these numbers and experiences like Richards. Match what he's hearing. Larry is Executive Vice President for Health Policy at KAA, a nonpartisan health policy and news organization.

They maybe even sent you a survey. We poll the American public every month. You know, what are your concerns? And amazingly, health care has come out as the top economic worry for the American public. I mean, even higher than gas prices. which frankly surprised us. Yeah, Larry says things like your utilities, grocery bills, and rents can go up and down,

but you can mostly ballpark where that'll be like month to month. Healthcare, on the other hand, that's getting eye-wateringly expensive. The average premium for a family health insurance policy is now about $27,000 a year. I mean, that's like having to buy a new car every single year. That doesn't even include co-pays, deductibles, But if you have employer health benefits, you can exhale a little bit.

At least part of that premium can be covered. They don't see a lot of that cost because the employer is paying for a lot of the premium. Larry says job lock can affect the whole labor market. You know, in a healthy economy, workers move, the economy churns. But when you stick to your job just for the health insurance, well, it throws sand and it gears the economy. For the labor market to work well, we want people to be able to move around. you know, to, you know, we want a competitive labor market so that people can get into jobs where they're most productive and most satisfied, where employers can find, you know,

the most qualified workers. If people are feeling locked into jobs because of health benefits, it just means a lot more friction in the labor market. It's not going to function as well, or our whole economy is not going to function as well. And recent health care changes haven't helped. Congress let the pandemic era subsidies for the Affordable Care Act expire at the end of 2025, and that's had a massive impact on prices. That led to an enormous premium shock for these ACA enrollees. Their out-of-pocket premiums increased by 58% on average.

And this issue, Larry says, will come to a head in the midterm elections in November. Democrats are looking to expand coverage, expand benefits. You can bet that Democrats are going to be running ads against Republicans, talking about those health care cuts. You know, Republicans have been out there talking about health care fraud. But that message from Republicans is definitely resonating, at least with Republicans. It's not clear it's resonating with the whole electorate yet. What does seem to be resonating is coming from the progressive wing of the Democrats, Medicare for All.

It's resonating because health care coverage here is creating so much anxiety. And that anxiety makes sense to Larry. Health care, you never know what's around the next corner. You never know when you're going to get sick and get hit with a big bill that you can't afford. Or if you're going to lose your job and your health benefits. That just happened to Richard. And now he has just a few weeks to figure out what he's going to do until his benefits run out. I'm in my mid-50s, so I'm still not old enough to be able to take into, like, Medicare or one of those type of programs.

My wife and kids are still under my insurance plan. Richard's job search will be shaped a lot less by what he wants to do, and more about the health care that he and his family need. Honestly, I would say I could take a reduction in salary as long as there's a health insurance coverage that's at least similar. You know, that's obviously at this point. I feel that that would probably be something more important to me. I'm not a gambler, so I'm kind of like, okay, I don't know if I can't really sit there

and kind of risk not having. So, yeah, each month for Jobs Friday, we can count jobs. added and jobs lost, but we can't measure deferred ambition. And at least in the meantime, Richard's ambition, his dreams, they're going to have to take a back seat. This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie with engineering by Anli Huang. It was fact-checked by CIA Juarez, Kate Canaan et's the show, and The Indicator is a production of NPR.