Just about everything related to the U.S. employee benefits market is intensely local, and that's true even of the most basic benefits market fact: The percentage of the people in a metropolitan area who have employer health plan coverage.
The U.S. Census Bureau tells the story in the new Private Health Insurance Coverage by Type and Selected Characteristics, which is part of a new batch of "5-year estimates" data.
The bureau gathered the data for the new tables over a 5-year period starting in 2019 and ending in 2023. It's not as up-to-date as the 1-year 2023 data, but it includes such a huge sample that you can use it to look up your ZIP code. If you have enough neighbors to meet the Census Bureau's privacy standards, you can use the 5-year data to look up information for your block.
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The tables are in the public domain. That means you can use the figures in your own reports, articles and infographics without fear of copyright complaints.
The results for the employer-sponsored health coverage show that, in the survey period ending in 2023, about 62.8% of the people ages 19 through 64 who lived in or around a typical U.S. city — or "metropolitan statistical area" — had employer plan coverage.
But that median hides a great deal of variation: the percentage of working-age adults with employer coverage ranges from 25.5%, in Guayama, Puerto Rico, up to 77.9%, in Madison, Wisconsin.
In the 10 metropolitan areas with the highest population, the employer coverage rate for working-age people ranges from 50.8% to 70.75%.
For a look at the working-age employer coverage rates for the 10 most populous metropolitan areas, see the gallery above.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
