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As many Americans struggle to keep up with the rising cost of living — housing, groceries, electricity and other necessities — their financial stress is getting more attention in the workplace.
In 2025, employer discomfort at their workers’ financial well-being reached a new high: 48% rated their concern at 9 or 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, compared with 43% in 2024 and only 39% in 2023, according to recent research from the Employee Benefit Research Institute. As recently as 2019, the year before Covid, that share stood at 22%.
Since 2022, “we’ve seen employers shift away from retirement as the top area of concern toward more of the day-to-day cost of living issues, and budgeting and savings issues,” said Jake Spiegel, a senior research associate at the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
“Employees are feeling the squeeze from above-trend inflation,” Spiegel said.
Paycheck to paycheck
Although inflation has eased to a yearly rate of 2.7% since peaking at 9.1% in June 2022, prices overall have climbed more than 25% since 2020, based on the consumer price index.
The result has been a large share of households whose budgets are pinched by higher costs. More than half (57%) of employees live paycheck to paycheck, according to a 2025 survey of close to 90,000 participants in 401(k) retirement plans by Bank of America. While wage growth has generally outpaced inflation over the past two years, that came after a period when income lagged behind inflation in 2021 and 2022.
Employers, who are interested in helping employees manage stress in order to reduce absenteeism or worker dissatisfaction, have been doing more to focus on the financial well-being of their employees.
More than two-thirds (70%) of employers engaged in some sort of financial wellness initiative in 2025, up from 59% the year before, according to the EBRI research. The study included responses from 406 benefits decisionmakers at companies with at least 500 employees and that are either offering financial wellness programs or interested in doing so.
At the same time, a smaller share of employers say their efforts are making a “large impact”: 43%, compared with 60% in 2024 and 73% in 2023.
Employers may be taking cues from their employees when assessing the impact of their programs, he said.
“We see evidence in one of our other surveys … that employees tend to be less rosy than employers when it comes to rating the effectiveness of benefits,” he said.
Financial wellness design
The specifics of any financial wellness program differ from company to company. They could include, for example, benefits like payroll advance loans, short-term loans through a third-party and access to emergency funds through dedicated savings accounts or their 401(k) — either through a loan or hardship withdrawal.
Other times, it could include offering seminars or webinars that focus on specific issues like creating a budget, investing or saving for retirement.
Also, 68% indicated that their workers have access to financial advisors and 46% offer access to financial coaches. Sometimes, the company subsidizes the cost either fully or partly for workers to meet with experts one-on-one.
“Financial wellness [programs] with one-on-one sessions are a strategic way to provide more access” to professionals who specialize in providing financial guidance, said certified financial planner Uchechi Kalu, founder of Greenlight Financial Planning in Los Angeles.
Kalu is working with a nonprofit in Chicago whose employees are able to meet with her twice annually, via video calls, about whatever financial issues they are facing. With the employer subsidizing half of the cost, workers pay $118 per session, Kalu said. She said that when employers help pay for these kinds of sessions, it can make a difference in whether workers make use of the benefit or not.
She has provided guidance related to a variety of financial issues, including budgeting, investing, home buying and affording overseas travel.
“The one-on-ones are when you get to reach people in critical moments and help them along their journey,” Kalu said.