Texas employers pay the part of the premium their employees do not. The federal survey that measures small-group premiums reports the employee side of that split, not the employer side, so there is no published Texas employer share to quote. What an individual Texas employer pays is set by that employer, subject to whatever contribution condition its issuer applies.
That is an unsatisfying answer to a direct question, so the rest of this page is about why it is the accurate one — what the published Texas figures actually measure, what they are conditioned on, and where the decision really sits.
Which side of the split the published Texas figures measure
The measurement of record for small-employer premiums in Texas is AHRQ’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey–Insurance Component, whose Texas state table is published as Texas2025.xlsx. The rows in it that speak to the contribution question are measured from the employee’s side.
MEPS-IC reports that employees enrolled in single coverage contributed 18.1% of total premiums in 2025, at Texas private-sector establishments with fewer than 50 employees that offer health insurance (MEPS-IC 2025, Table II, row II.C.3). The survey publishes a standard error of 3.38% alongside it.
MEPS-IC also reports that in 2025 the average total employee contribution for single coverage was $1,583 per enrolled employee, at Texas private-sector establishments with fewer than 50 employees that offer health insurance (MEPS-IC 2025, Table II, row II.C.2), with a standard error of $288.99.
Both are labeled, in the survey’s own row descriptions, as employee contribution measures. Every row in the Texas table whose description mentions contribution is an employee-contribution row; the workbook carries no average employer contribution row and no percent-of-premium-contributed-by-employers row.
Why the rest of the premium cannot be turned into a number here
There are obvious ways to manufacture an employer share out of what is published, and this site uses none of them. Subtracting the employee’s percentage from the whole is one. Subtracting the employee’s dollar contribution from the total premium is another. Both produce a number that appears in no source. Attaching the survey’s name to either would be citing MEPS-IC for a figure MEPS-IC does not publish, which is worse than an uncited number rather than better — it is a fabrication wearing a citation.
So the remainder gets described and not quantified. The employer paid the rest. How much the rest comes to is not a number the survey publishes, and it is not a number that can be worked out from the two it does. That sentence is the honest ceiling of what a published source supports, and it is deliberately where this page stops. If you want to understand the whole premium before the split, group health coverage is the product page for the Texas plans this split applies to.
Establishment, firm, and why the column is not a count of Texas businesses
Both figures are drawn from a column whose unit is not what most readers assume. The survey counts establishments, and it sizes them by the employment of the firm that owns them. Its own glossary is explicit about both terms:
“ESTABLISHMENT - A particular workplace or physical location where business is conducted, or services or industrial operations are performed. Also known as a site. The sample is chosen at the establishment level, and the MEPS-IC data are collected at the establishment level whenever possible.”
“FIRM - A business entity consisting of one or more establishments under common ownership or control. Also known as an enterprise. A firm represents the entire organization, including the company headquarters and all divisions, subsidiaries and branches. A firm may consist of a single-location establishment or multiple establishments. In the case of a single-location firm, the firm and establishment are identical. Firm size is the total number of employees for the entire firm as reported on the sample frame.”
The practical consequence for a Texas reader: a single Houston site belonging to a large multi-location company is not in this column, and a small Texas company’s only office is. That is why the figures above are written as statements about establishments rather than about businesses. The two are the same thing only when the firm has one location.
The data is collected by the Census Bureau rather than by AHRQ directly, which the survey also states in its own words: “The U.S. Census Bureau serves as the data collection agent for the MEPS-IC survey.”
The sample is drawn from the Business Register, the confidential list of establishments the Bureau maintains.
The survey’s column is not the Texas statutory definition of a small employer
This distinction matters in Texas because the Texas definition is unusually specific. Tex. Ins. Code § 1501.002(14) defines a small employer as a person who employed an average of at least two employees but not more than 50 employees on business days during the preceding calendar year and who also employs at least two employees on the first day of the plan year — a floor, a ceiling, and a second same-day headcount, all in one definition.
The survey’s column has none of those. It has no floor, no plan-year test, and it counts the firm’s employees as reported on the sample frame rather than as the Texas statute counts them. The two populations overlap; they are not the same set, and nothing on this page presents a survey figure as describing “Texas small employers” in the statutory sense. The Texas small business health insurance page is where the statutory definition and the state’s own rules are set out.
Both figures describe employers that already offer coverage
The third qualifier is the one most easily lost. Both rows are measured at establishments that offer health insurance. Every establishment offering nothing is excluded from the denominator.
That means neither figure is an average across all Texas small employers, and neither one tells you how common it is to offer coverage in the first place. They describe the contribution behavior of establishments that already made the decision you may still be weighing. Reading them as a norm for Texas small businesses generally would be reading past the row label.
Who actually decides the employer contribution in Texas
Here is where the answer stops being a survey question and becomes a Texas law question, and the Texas answer is genuinely useful.
Chapter 1501 does not place a contribution requirement on the small employer itself. What it addresses is the issuer’s ability to require one in accordance with its usual and customary practices, and the whole of that mechanism sits in one subsection at Tex. Ins. Code § 1501.153(a). The point for the contribution question is the direction of the obligation: the condition you will actually meet comes from the issuer you place the group with, not from a floor Texas sets for everybody. Working through that for the first time is what setting up a first Texas group plan is mostly about.
That is also why the same employer can hear different contribution conditions from different issuers on the same census, and why the answer to “how much do I have to pay” is one of the first things to establish when you ask for quotes rather than something to look up in advance.
Federal law adds a qualification that has to travel alongside the guaranteed-issue rule small employers hear about most often. Guaranteed availability in the small group market is expressly subject to paragraphs (b) through (d) of 45 CFR 147.104, which is where employer contribution and group participation rules live. An employer that cannot meet those conditions is not simply declined — the issuer may restrict coverage to an annual enrollment window instead. Guaranteed issue and the participation and contribution conditions belong in the same sentence, and either half on its own misleads.
What the survey’s own precision rule says about these figures
The survey flags estimates it considers imprecise, and it publishes the rule it uses:
“RSE > .50: Estimate should not be reported or displayed in tables due to extremely large sampling error. .30 ≤ RSE ≤ .50: Estimate can be reported but flagged with an * to indicate that its precision is questionable. RSE < .30: Estimate is deemed precise and can be reported with no *.”
Neither Texas figure on this page carries that flag, and neither does its published standard error. That is the whole of the reliability signal available for a state-level cell — the survey publishes establishment counts nationally and does not publish a Texas-specific unweighted sample size on any of its methodology pages. The standard errors quoted above are therefore the qualifier, and they are quoted with the figures rather than tucked away, because a survey average reported without its precision is reported as more exact than its source makes it.
One more piece of vintage that belongs with the figures: the data year is 2025 and the workbook was published in July 2026. There is no newer Texas edition, and the survey’s own overview page states its table range as ending in that data year.
What this actually leaves you to decide
Strip the published figures back to what they support, and a Texas employer is left with real decisions rather than a number to match.
One is what share of the single-coverage premium you intend to fund, which is yours to set and which your issuer will test against its own condition. Another is whether you fund dependent tiers on the same basis or a different one, which is a separate decision from the single-coverage one and is not described by either figure above. The last is what the contribution does to participation, because those move together: a contribution that leaves employees paying more tends to pull participation down, and participation is a condition the issuer applies.
None of that is a lookup. It is a plan-design conversation, and it is the one to have before anybody quotes a rate — the contribution you set this year is the one you will be defending against next year’s rate.
The bottom line
No published source states a Texas employer share, and it cannot be worked out from the employee-side figures that do exist. What you contribute is your decision, taken inside whatever contribution condition your issuer applies as a condition of writing the group.
Frequently asked questions
Does Texas law say how much of the premium an employer has to pay?
Chapter 1501 of the Texas Insurance Code does not impose a contribution requirement on the small employer. It does address the issuer’s ability to require one in accordance with its usual and customary practices, at Tex. Ins. Code § 1501.153(a). So the number that actually binds a Texas group is the issuer’s condition, not a state minimum.
What does the federal survey actually publish for Texas?
AHRQ’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey–Insurance Component publishes, for Texas private-sector establishments with fewer than 50 employees that offer coverage, the share of total premium that employees enrolled in single coverage contributed and the average dollar amount those employees contributed. Both are employee-side measures. The workbook carries no employer-contribution row at all.
Can you subtract the employee share and get the employer share?
No, and this site will not do it. Subtracting one published figure from another produces a number no source states, and attaching the survey’s name to that result would be citing the survey for something it does not publish. The remainder is real; a figure for the remainder is not.
Do these Texas figures describe employers that do not offer coverage?
No. Both are measured at establishments that offer health insurance, so every establishment offering nothing is outside the denominator. They are not averages across all Texas small employers.
Is the survey’s firm-size column the same as the Texas small-employer definition?
It is not. The survey classifies establishments by the total employment of the parent firm and sets no floor. The Texas definition at Tex. Ins. Code § 1501.002(14) sets a floor of at least two employees, a ceiling, and a second headcount test on the first day of the plan year. The two populations overlap without being the same set.
Does the county your business sits in change the contribution question?
It changes the premium the contribution is a share of, not who pays it. Geographic rating area is a separate subject with its own federal rule, and the contribution split sits on top of whatever premium comes out of it.
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 works the employer side of the Texas small-group contribution question every renewal, and spends most of it explaining which published figures describe the employee’s share rather than the employer’s. Start with the Wexford Health Insurance quote form.