Industry News

On October 8, 2020, the Commonwealth Fund, Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research released a joint issue brief, How Many Americans Have Lost Jobs with Employer Health Coverage During the Pandemic?  According to the report, as of June 2020, an estimated 7.7 million workers lost jobs with Employer-Sponsored Insurance (ESI) due to the pandemic-induced recession. Of these workers, the ESI covered 6.9 million of their dependents, for a total of 14.6 million affected individuals. 

Of those that lost jobs with ESI during the pandemic, over 50% were temporarily laid off or furloughed and still had ESI through the employer. By August 2020, the number of temporarily laid-off workers dropped to 6.2 million, but workers permanently laid-off increased from 2.6 million to 4.1 million. Although improvements in the labor market since April 2020 have been favorable for many laid-off workers, a large minority has already lost or remains at risk of losing ESI. 

The brief concludes, “Estimating the number of individuals who have lost ESI because of the COVID-19 recession requires estimates of the number of job losers, the number of job losers with ESI, and the number of job losers with ESI whose coverage was not continued by their employer. Considerable uncertainty surrounds all these estimates.” 

The brief is available here.