The honest answer is that nobody publishes it. The federal survey that reports South Carolina — the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Insurance Component, which is the only premium source this brand will use for a state it covers — reports what the employee contributes and has no row for what the employer contributes. Not a percentage, not a dollar figure, nowhere in the table. What can be said, and said precisely, is the employee side: at South Carolina establishments that offer health insurance, in firms with fewer than 50 employees, employees enrolled in single coverage contributed 20.8% of total premiums in 2025, and the average total annual employee contribution for single coverage was $1,881. The employer carried the rest.
What the federal survey actually reports for South Carolina
The table is titled “Table II. State of South Carolina, private-sector data by firm size, 2025,”
published in July 2026, and the column those figures come from is headed “Less than 50 employees.”
There is no newer edition; the 2026 workbook is a genuine absence rather than a file we failed to find.
Two rows carry the answer to this question as far as any source carries it. The row labeled “Percent of total premiums contributed by employees enrolled in single coverage at establishments that offer health insurance” reads 20.8% in that column. The row labeled “Average total employee contribution (in dollars) per enrolled employee for single coverage at establishments that offer health insurance” reads $1,881. Both carry the survey’s reliability flags clean — neither is suppressed and neither is marked as failing the precision standard.
The employer share is not a published number, and that is the finding
It is tempting to treat the employee share as half of a pair. It is not. Every row in that South Carolina table was searched for an employer-side counterpart, and there is none — no employer percentage, no employer dollar amount, no row that reports the split from the employer’s direction.
So any South Carolina employer-share percentage you encounter was produced by whoever published it, not by the survey they credit. The arithmetic that produces it is trivial, which is exactly why it spreads: subtract the employee share from the whole and you have a number that looks sourced and is not. We will not print one. The employer carried the remainder of the premium — that sentence is supported, and the number that would make it feel more precise is not.
This is a general habit worth borrowing when you read cost material about your own state. A figure attributed to a survey should appear in that survey under a row label you can read. If it only appears after a subtraction, it belongs to the writer.
Three qualifiers that have to travel with those figures
The unit is a workplace, sorted by the size of the company that owns it. The survey’s own technical notes say the sample is selected and collected at the establishment level, that an establishment is generally a single physical location, and that a firm can consist of one establishment or several. So “Less than 50 employees”
describes establishments belonging to firms in that size band, which is not the same population as “small businesses in South Carolina.”
That band is not South Carolina’s statutory small-employer test. S.C. Code § 38-71-920(1) describes an employer that “employed no more than fifty eligible employees or employed an average of not more than fifty employees on business days during the preceding calendar year” — no more than fifty, inclusive, measured over the preceding calendar year, with affiliated companies counted as one employer. The survey column is “less than 50,”
measured differently, with no affiliate aggregation. South Carolina also carries two scope tests rather than one: § 38-71-930 applies the rating subarticle to plans covering “one or more employees of a small employer,” while § 38-71-1340(A) applies the availability article to “groups of two to fifty.” The survey column matches none of them exactly.
It is a denominator, not a population. Every premium row in that table is measured at establishments that offer health insurance. In the same column, the survey reports that 21.2% of South Carolina private-sector establishments in firms with fewer than 50 employees offered health insurance in 2025. The contribution figures describe that group. They say nothing about South Carolina small employers generally, and nothing about any particular one.
The share you pay is mostly a decision, not a market rate
Once the published data has been read accurately, the thing employers most want — a benchmark that tells them what they ought to pay — turns out not to be there. What is there instead is a decision that belongs to the employer.
In the small group market, an employer choosing coverage decides how much it puts toward employee premiums and whether it extends an offer to dependents at all. That is described plainly in the federal small-business material: an employer offering coverage chooses how much it pays toward employees’ premiums and whether to offer coverage to their dependents, may offer one plan or a choice of plans, may offer health coverage, dental coverage or both, and may set how long new employees wait before enrolling.
Those are levers, not obligations. Which is why a published average would be a poor guide even if one existed: it would blend businesses making very different decisions for very different reasons into a single number and hand it back to you as a target.
Contribution rules are a gate, not a published rate
The decision is not unconstrained. Minimum employer contribution and minimum group participation requirements are genuine gating conditions in the small group market, and their legal position is easy to get wrong: they sit outside the guaranteed-availability promise rather than inside it.
45 CFR 147.104 requires an issuer in the small group market to accept any employer that applies for its approved products, and then says that guarantee is subject to paragraphs (b) through (d) of the same section. Paragraph (b) addresses the case of “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,” and permits the issuer to restrict availability to a narrow annual enrollment window in that case.
South Carolina’s availability statute reaches the same result directly. Section 38-71-1360(A)(4)(a) requires a small employer insurer to issue its plans to an eligible small employer that applies and “agrees to make the required premium payments and to satisfy the other reasonable provisions of the health insurance plan relating to employer contribution rules and group participation rules.”
What the rule requires, in a given plan, is set by the issuer filing that plan. No figure is published for it at any source this brand accepts, so we name the requirement and stop there. One point of mechanism is worth having, because it changes the arithmetic in employers’ favor: participation is measured against employees offered coverage, and employees already covered elsewhere — through another group plan, government coverage or individual coverage — count toward participation rather than against it.
South Carolina protects the employee’s contribution, not the employer’s bill
State law does speak to premium and health status, but it is worth reading which direction it points.
Section 38-71-860(B)(1) says an issuer offering group coverage “may not require any individual, as a condition of enrollment or continued enrollment under the plan, to pay a premium or contribution which is greater than the premium or contribution for a similarly situated individual enrolled in the plan on the basis of any health status-related factor.” That protection runs to the person.
Then subsection (B)(2)(a) draws the line. Nothing in that protection may be construed to “restrict the amount that an employer may be charged for coverage under a group health plan under applicable state law.” The individual cannot be singled out inside the group. The group’s own bill is governed by the state’s rating provisions, which is a different subject in a different subarticle.
What moves the total your share comes out of
The share is a fraction of something, and in South Carolina that something changes on a formula rather than by a flat cap. Section 38-71-940(A)(3) sets a renewal increase as the sum of three named components: the change in the insurer’s new business premium rate across the rating period, an adjustment attributable to the claim experience, health status or duration of coverage of the employees or dependents of the small employer as determined from the insurer’s rate manual for its class of business, and any adjustment for a change in coverage or in the employer’s case characteristics. A renewal is not one number, and reading it as one is how employers end up arguing about the wrong component.
Two things about that statute have to be said together. Section 38-71-980 lets the Director suspend all or part of § 38-71-940 for one or more small employers and rating periods, on an insurer filing and a finding that suspension is reasonable in light of the insurer’s financial condition or would enhance the efficiency and fairness of the market — so the bands are not a permanent fixture. And the South Carolina rating subarticle and the federal factor rules sit on the books at the same time without any source we read resolving how they interact. We do not assert which governs your policy. What governs your actual renewal, practically, is what your issuer filed and what the department approved.
Section 125 decides whether the employee’s share is pre-tax
One more piece of the answer has nothing to do with the split and everything to do with what the split costs. A cafeteria plan under section 125 is a written plan that lets employees choose between cash or taxable benefits and certain qualified benefits, and accident and health benefits are on the permitted list. Without that written plan document, employee contributions are taken after tax. With it, they can be taken pre-tax. It is the most concrete thing on this page: either the document exists or it does not.
What to settle before you ask for South Carolina numbers
Decide your contribution before you shop, not after — it is your decision, it is the number the rest of the conversation turns on, and there is no published South Carolina benchmark to hide behind. Ask the issuer for its contribution and participation rules in writing, and ask how participation is counted for employees who already hold coverage elsewhere. Confirm whether a section 125 plan document is in place. And treat any South Carolina employer-share percentage you are shown as something to trace: ask which table it came from and what the row was called. For the employer side, there is no such row.
The bottom line
No authorized source publishes a South Carolina employer share. MEPS-IC reports the employee side — 20.8% of the total premium for single coverage, and an average annual employee contribution of $1,881 — at establishments that offer coverage in firms with fewer than 50 employees, and the employer carried the rest. Your own share is a number you set, inside whatever contribution rule your issuer applies.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of the premium does a South Carolina employer pay?
No source we accept publishes that figure for South Carolina. The federal Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Insurance Component reports the employee side only: employees enrolled in single coverage contributed 20.8% of total premiums at South Carolina establishments that offer health insurance, in firms with fewer than 50 employees, in 2025. There is no employer-share row and no employer-dollar row anywhere in that table. The employer carried the rest, and we will not turn that sentence into a percentage by subtraction, because the resulting number would be ours rather than the survey’s.
Is there a legal minimum an employer must contribute in South Carolina?
Minimum employer contribution requirements are real and they are applied by issuers, but they are not a single published rate. Under 45 CFR 147.104(b), employer contribution and group participation rules operate as allowed under applicable state law, and they sit outside the guaranteed-availability promise rather than inside it. South Carolina’s own availability statute at § 38-71-1360(A)(4)(a) conditions the insurer’s duty to issue on the employer agreeing to satisfy the plan’s employer contribution rules and group participation rules. What the level is, for a given plan, is a question for the issuer that filed it.
Does the $1,881 figure mean my employees will pay that much?
No. It is an average of the total annual employee contribution per enrolled employee for single coverage, across South Carolina establishments that offer health insurance in firms with fewer than 50 employees, for the 2025 data year. It describes a population of workplaces, not a plan, and certainly not yours. It is an annual figure and should not be converted to a monthly or per-paycheck amount. And it is measured only where coverage is offered at all, which in that same table is a minority of South Carolina establishments in that firm-size band.
Can South Carolina law limit what my business is charged for the group?
The state’s health-status protection at § 38-71-860(B)(1) runs to the individual, not to the employer. It says an issuer may not require an individual, as a condition of enrollment or continued enrollment, to pay a premium or contribution greater than that for a similarly situated individual on the basis of a health status-related factor. Subsection (B)(2)(a) then says that nothing in that protection may be construed to restrict the amount an employer may be charged for coverage under a group health plan under applicable state law. The employee-side protection and the employer’s bill are two different subjects.
Can employees pay their share before tax?
Only if the employer has the plan document. A cafeteria plan under Internal Revenue Code section 125 is, in the IRS’s own words, “a written plan that allows your employees to choose between receiving cash or taxable benefits, instead of certain qualified benefits for which the law provides an exclusion from wages,” and accident and health benefits are a permitted qualified benefit. Without that written plan in place, employee premium contributions come out after tax. It is a concrete document an employer either has or does not have, and it is worth confirming before the first payroll run under a new plan.
About the author
Nate Jones, CPCU, is the founder of Wexford Insurance and Wexford Health Insurance, an independent agency placing small-business group benefits in 9 states. Nate Jones sources South Carolina premium-share figures to the federal employer survey that actually publishes the state, and declines to compute an employer share that no source reports. Start with the Wexford Health Insurance quote form.