State of Employee Benefits Report 2026

May 13, 2026

Real benefits data, real employee behavior.

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The Benefitfocus State of Employee Benefits™ Report 20261 is here! 

Drawn from the claims and enrollment data of more than 1.8 million members, this year's report delivers the benchmarks and strategic guidance that will help HR leaders act with confidence. Download today and read insights on three cost-drivers, including: 

  • Opportunities to optimize benefits usage – 29.5% of members lack a primary care provider (PCP), which may signal a reliance on costly emergency department visits.
  • Chronic condition prevalence and spend – The overall population of members managing chronic conditions dropped slightly at –0.6%, but the total medical + Rx spend per member per year for most conditions is rising.
  • Pharmacy spend distribution – 29.5% of total employer spend is prescription drugs, with over half of them being brand-name drugs with no generic available. 

Our report also provides benchmarking data and benefits strategy tips to discover: 

  • The voluntary and supplemental benefits that employers are offering and employees are adopting.
  • How to work with your broker and mitigate these cost drivers.

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1 The State of Employee Benefits 2026 was compiled from enrollment transactions aggregated across 316 large employers (1,000+ full time employees) within the Benefitfocus customer base, representing more than 1.8 million employees in total. The data was evaluated on an anonymous basis. Enrollment records include both active and passive enrollments made by a variety of industry roles (employee, carrier representative, broker, benefits administrator, etc) from the fall of 2023 through fall of 2025 for plan year effective dates of January 1. These measurements are not meant to be a nationally representative sample, but to represent the aggregate activity for large employers on the Benefitfocus platform. 

For data related to medical and prescription drug claims, Benefitfocus drew from 68 employers in our Health Insights Platform with a total population of approximately 600,000 employees and their dependents. Claims were assessed based on claim service dates from 1/1/24 through 12/31/2025, for year over year comparison periods. Population Health data was compiled using Johns Hopkins ACG® System (version 14.0.1). The underlying claims demographics and claims were sanitized per HIPAA Safe Harbor guidelines and were filtered to exclude generations older than Baby Boomers to comply with the age 90 cutoff mentioned in section (3) of “Guidance on De-identification of Protected Information. November 26, 2012” which cites the Code of Federal Regulations Title 45 §164.514(b)(2)(i)(C).”

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