How Much of the Premium Does an Employer Pay in Illinois

The honest answer is that no authorized source publishes it. The federal survey that measures employer-sponsored coverage in Illinois reports what employees contribute, and it has no employer-contribution row at all — not as a dollar amount, not as a share of premium, not in any of the tables that cover small employers. This post says what that survey does report, states the qualifiers that travel with it, and stops where the published data stops.

That may read like a limitation. It is actually the most useful thing that can be said about the question, because the figure most often quoted as “what employers pay in Illinois” does not come from a survey of Illinois employers. It comes from someone subtracting.

The row that does not exist

The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Insurance Component, run by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, publishes a state table for Illinois. In preparing this post every row in that table mentioning “contribution” or “employer” was enumerated rather than spot-checked. Every contribution row is an employee-contribution row. There is no average employer contribution row and no percent-of-premium-contributed-by-employers row anywhere in the table.

So the question in this post’s title asks for a number that the authorized source does not produce. It is a reasonable question — it is one an owner is entitled to ask before a first plan — and the survey simply measures the other side of the transaction.

What MEPS-IC is, and what it counted

It is worth knowing what kind of instrument this is, because it changes how much weight any figure from it can carry.

MEPS-IC is an annual survey of employers. The U.S. Census Bureau is the data collection agent, and the list sample is drawn from the Census Bureau’s Business Register. AHRQ states the collection unit plainly: “The sample is chosen at the establishment level, and the MEPS-IC data are collected at the establishment level whenever possible.”

The Illinois table is titled “Table II. State of Illinois, private-sector data by firm size, 2025,” and the small-employer column is headed “Less than 50 employees.” The data year is 2025; the table was published in July 2026, which is the ordinary schedule — AHRQ posts private-sector tables in July of the year after collection. There is no newer Illinois edition; a probe for a 2026 table returns nothing.

AHRQ also flags estimates that do not meet its standard of reliability or precision. Neither figure below carries that flag.

It is worth saying why this survey and not another. A national figure placed on an Illinois page is a national figure, however it is labeled, and the whole reason to run a state-level question is that the answer varies by state. MEPS-IC publishes an Illinois table, so the national fallback is not reached here. One edition of that table is the source for this post, and no year-over-year comparison is drawn from it, because a trend statement is a claim about two editions and only one is being read.

The employee side, as the survey states it

Two rows in that column answer as much of the title question as any published source can.

For the dollar side, the row reads “Average total employee contribution (in dollars) per enrolled employee for single coverage at establishments that offer health insurance.” In 2025 that figure was $2,112 for Illinois private-sector establishments at firms with fewer than 50 employees. AHRQ publishes a standard error of $261.02 alongside it.

For the share, the row reads “Percent of total premiums contributed by employees enrolled in single coverage at establishments that offer health insurance.” In 2025, employees enrolled in single coverage at those establishments contributed 21.4% of total premiums, with a standard error of 2.55%.

The balance of the premium was carried by the employer. That sentence is as far as the published record goes, and it is deliberately written without a figure attached, because attaching one would mean producing a number AHRQ does not report.

Three qualifiers that travel with both figures

Neither figure means what it appears to mean if it is lifted out of the table.

The unit counted is the establishment, and the size band belongs to the firm. An establishment is “a particular workplace or physical location.” A firm is “a business entity consisting of one or more establishments under common ownership or control,” and “firm size is the total number of employees for the entire firm as reported on the sample frame.” So one site of a large multi-location company is not in the “Less than 50” column, and a small company’s single site is. Reading “establishments” as “businesses” quietly changes the population.

The column is close to, but not the same as, the Illinois statutory test. 215 ILCS 97/5 defines an Illinois small employer as one who employed an average of at least 2 but not more than 50 employees on business days during the preceding calendar year and who employs at least 2 employees on the first day of the plan year. The MEPS column has no floor of two and no first-day-of-plan-year condition. The populations overlap; they are not the same set, and a MEPS figure is not a statement about Illinois small employers in the statutory sense.

Both figures are conditioned on offering. The rows read “at establishments that offer health insurance.” The denominator excludes every establishment that offers nothing. These are not averages across all small employers in Illinois — they are averages across the subset that already has a plan.

Why the subtraction stays undone

The temptation is obvious: take the share employees contributed, or take the employee dollar figure against a total premium figure, and the employer’s side appears to fall out. It does not, and the reasons are worth stating.

A derived figure is not a reported figure. AHRQ’s published estimates each carry their own standard error; the result of subtracting one from another is a quantity with properties AHRQ has not published and has not stood behind. Presenting it as though the survey said it attributes to a federal agency a number it never produced.

It is also a category error about what the reader is asking. An owner asking how much of the premium the employer pays is asking what their own business should expect to carry. A statewide survey average across establishments with different plan designs, different enrollment tiers, different carriers and different contribution strategies cannot answer that, and dressing it in one more decimal place does not make it closer.

The one place Illinois law does fix an employer’s share

There is a single Illinois statute that states an employer’s premium share outright, and it is worth knowing precisely because it is so narrow.

The Public Safety Employee Benefits Act, at 820 ILCS 320/10, provides that “an employer who employs a full-time law enforcement, correctional or correctional probation officer, or firefighter, who, on or after the effective date of this Act suffers a catastrophic injury or is killed in the line of duty shall pay the entire premium of the employer’s health insurance plan” for the injured employee, that employee’s spouse, and each dependent child. Source: P.A. 103-340, eff. 1-1-24.

That is a genuine Illinois-law duty on an employer to fund health coverage, and it is contingent — it is triggered by a catastrophic injury or a line-of-duty death, and it reaches a defined class of public-safety employer. It says nothing about what a private Illinois employer contributes toward an ordinary group plan, and it should never be read across to one.

What actually decides your contribution

Three things do, and none of them is a survey average.

The first is your plan design. A contribution expressed as a percentage of a chosen benchmark plan behaves very differently from a flat dollar amount, and the two produce different results as your census ages and as enrollment tiers shift between single and family coverage.

The second is the set of participation and contribution requirements your carrier applies. These are real gating conditions in the small group market and they sit outside the guaranteed-issue promise: 45 CFR 147.104 requires an issuer to offer its approved small-group products to any employer that applies, but expressly subject to paragraphs (b) through (d), which contemplate a group health plan in the small group market “that cannot comply with employer contribution or group participation rules for the offering of health insurance coverage, as allowed under applicable State law.” An employer that cannot meet them may have availability restricted to a defined annual enrollment window rather than being declined outright. The level is set at state and issuer level, not fixed nationally — which is exactly why no single number answers this question for every Illinois employer.

The third is what you are trying to accomplish. A contribution strategy built to attract a particular kind of hire looks different from one built to hold a renewal flat, and both are decisions rather than benchmarks. The right conversation starts with your census and your plan year, not with a state average.