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As many Individuals wrestle to maintain up with the rising cost of living — housing, groceries, electricity and different requirements — their monetary stress is getting extra consideration within the office.
In 2025, employer discomfort at their employees’ financial well-being reached a brand new excessive: 48% rated their concern at 9 or 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, in contrast with 43% in 2024 and solely 39% in 2023, in line with latest analysis from the Worker Profit Analysis Institute. As just lately as 2019, the 12 months earlier than Covid, that share stood at 22%.
Since 2022, “we have seen employers shift away from retirement as the highest space of concern towards extra of the day-to-day price of dwelling points, and budgeting and financial savings points,” mentioned Jake Spiegel, a senior analysis affiliate on the Worker Profit Analysis Institute.
“Workers are feeling the squeeze from above-trend inflation,” Spiegel mentioned.
Paycheck-to-paycheck
Though inflation has eased to a yearly rate of 2.7% since peaking at 9.1% in June 2022, costs total have climbed greater than 25% since 2020, primarily based on the consumer price index.
The end result has been a big share of households whose budgets are pinched by greater prices. Greater than half (57%) of workers reside paycheck to paycheck, in line with a 2025 survey of near 90,000 members in 401(okay) retirement plans by Financial institution of America. Whereas wage growth has usually outpaced inflation over the previous two years, that got here after a interval when income lagged behind inflation in 2021 and 2022.
Employers, who’re occupied with serving to worker handle stress with a purpose to scale back absenteeism or employee dissatisfaction, have been doing extra to concentrate on the monetary well-being of their workers.
Greater than two-thirds (70%) of employers engaged in some kind of monetary wellness initiative in 2025, up from 59% the 12 months earlier than, in line with the EBRI analysis. The examine included responses from 406 advantages decisionmakers at corporations with at the least 500 workers and which can be both providing monetary wellness applications or occupied with doing so.
On the similar time, a smaller share of employers say their efforts are making a “massive impression”: 43%, in contrast with 60% in 2024 and 73% in 2023.
Employers could also be taking cues from their workers when assessing the impression of their applications, he mentioned.
“We see proof in one in all our different surveys … that workers are typically much less rosy than employers in terms of ranking the effectiveness of advantages,” he mentioned.
Monetary wellness design
The specifics of any monetary wellness program differ from firm to firm. They may embody, for instance, advantages like payroll advance loans, short-term loans by a third-party and entry to emergency funds by devoted financial savings accounts or their 401(okay) — both by a mortgage or hardship withdrawal.
Different occasions, it might embody providing seminars or webinars that target particular points like making a price range, investing or saving for retirement.
Additionally, 68% indicated that their employees have entry to monetary advisors and 46% provide entry to monetary coaches. Typically, the corporate subsidizes the price both absolutely or partly for employees to fulfill with consultants one-on-one.
“Monetary wellness [programs] with one-on-one periods are a strategic manner to offer extra entry” to professionals who concentrate on offering monetary steerage, mentioned licensed monetary planner Uchechi Kalu, founding father of Greenlight Monetary Planning in Los Angeles.
Kalu is working with a nonprofit in Chicago whose workers are capable of meet together with her twice yearly, by way of video calls, about no matter monetary points they’re going through. With the employer subsidizing half of the price, employees pay $118 per session, Kalu mentioned. She mentioned that when employers assist pay for these sorts of periods, it may make a distinction in whether or not employees benefit from the profit or not.
She has supplied steerage associated to a wide range of monetary points, starting from budgeting to investing, and residential shopping for to affording abroad journey.
“The one-on-ones are whenever you get to achieve folks in crucial moments and assist them alongside their journey,” Kalu mentioned.
