{"id":16860,"date":"2026-07-25T14:42:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T09:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=16860"},"modified":"2026-07-25T14:42:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T09:42:27","slug":"u-s-workers-are-staying-in-unwanted-jobs-for-health-insurance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=16860","title":{"rendered":"U.S. workers are staying in unwanted jobs for health insurance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.axios.com\/ZzZ9ID5SB-PZfOYrinfx587Dm2c=\/0x0:1920x1080\/1366x768\/2025\/12\/01\/1764619806315.jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Almost a quarter of  workers in the U.S. \u2014 23 million adults \u2014 are experiencing &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/06\/30\/jobs-data-labor-market\" target=\"_blank\">job lock<\/a>,&#8221; staying in roles they don&#8217;t want to avoid losing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/02\/11\/charted-health-insurance-coverage-family-income\" target=\"_blank\">health insurance<\/a> benefits, according to a new Gallup <a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/712166\/one-four-employees-locked-jobs-health-insurance.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why it matters:<\/strong> Women and people who have chronic health conditions feel the burden most because <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/05\/26\/insurers-blame-affordability-health\" target=\"_blank\">health care costs<\/a> limit their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/03\/24\/where-you-work-matters-index-upward-mobility\" target=\"_blank\">career mobility<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/04\/21\/jobs-wages-hiring-fed\" target=\"_blank\">wage growth<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2025\/02\/06\/americans-national-mood-poll-record-low-trump\" target=\"_blank\">life satisfaction<\/a>. <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><strong>By the numbers: <\/strong>Almost half (48%) of<strong> <\/strong>respondents who described health care as a &#8220;major financial burden&#8221; are staying put in unwanted jobs.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fifty-three percent of U.S. workers who experience &#8220;a lot of stress&#8221; because of health care costs keep unwanted jobs to maintain their insurance.<\/li>\n<li>About 44% who have personal or household medical debt say they are staying in an unwanted job for insurance.<\/li>\n<li>Thirty-seven percent of workers in the U.S. who borrowed money in the past year to pay for medical expenses say they are staying in an unwanted job, compared with 22% of those who did not borrow money.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The intrigue:<\/strong> Workers with one or more chronic conditions are also 12 percentage points more likely than those without chronic conditions to report job lock (29% vs 17%).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>About 41% of workers with three or more diagnoses will do the same. The phenomenon is especially common among people with conditions that require ongoing or intensive care.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Between the lines:<\/strong> The chronic disease burden is more prominent among women, affecting 66% of women compared to 57% of men.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Women are more likely than men to experience job lock, at 30% vs. 20%, respectively.<\/li>\n<li>Women are also 12 percentage points more likely to experience financial problems due to healthcare expenses than men.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Zoom out:<\/strong> Job lock coincides with broader healthcare affordability challenges, with about half of Americans reporting difficulty paying for care or prescriptions.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>At the same time 5 million Americans have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2026\/06\/26\/nx-s1-5860746\/aca-health-insurance-subsidies-rates-premiums\" target=\"_blank\">dropped<\/a> their health insurance in 2026 after the Trump administration declined to extend subsidies for enrollees under the Affordable Care Act.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Worth noting:<\/strong> Large employers are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2025\/08\/20\/work-health-care-coverage-costs-increase\" target=\"_blank\">raising insurance premiums<\/a> this year by up to 10% after health care costs sharply outpaced expectations.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The increase is driven in part by pricy anti-inflammatory specialty drugs and high demand for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/07\/14\/weight-loss-glp-drugs-mental-health-jobs\" target=\"_blank\">GLP-1s<\/a>, the weight loss drugs that also treat diabetes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Methodology: Gallup conducted this survey from Oct. 27 to Dec. 22, 2025, among 5,660 U.S. adults. This analysis focuses on 2,322 employed respondents who rely on employer-sponsored health insurance as their primary source of coverage.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Editor&#8217;s note: This story and its headline have been corrected to make clear that the Gallup survey referred to U.S. workers (not all Americans).<\/em><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Go deeper:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/05\/26\/insurers-blame-affordability-health\" target=\"_blank\">Health insurers point fingers over affordability woes<\/a><\/p>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Almost a quarter of workers in the U.S. \u2014 23 million adults \u2014 are experiencing &#8220;job lock,&#8221; staying in roles they don&#8217;t want to avoid losing health insurance benefits, according to a new Gallup analysis. Why it matters: Women and people who have chronic health conditions feel the burden most because health care costs limit&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.axios.com\/ZzZ9ID5SB-PZfOYrinfx587Dm2c=\/0x0:1920x1080\/1366x768\/2025\/12\/01\/1764619806315.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}