August 13, 2026
ARC annually develops an auxiliary data set for the Department of Labor that appends to the March Current Population Survey (CPS). While the March CPS is the data source most often used for estimating health insurance coverage in the U.S. population, it lacks information about access to employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) as well as details about the coverage such as funding and plan type. The auxiliary dataset allows users to create custom tabulations of these characteristics or to reference the published set of tables.
For ESI in CY 2024, highlights include the following:
- Self-insurance continues to be an important source of coverage with almost 56% of enrollees in self-funded plans.
- While smaller employers (size <200) are less likely to report offering explicitly self-funded coverage, a type of self-funded coverage, level-funding, is not uncommon with 35% of those with coverage from a smaller employer enrolled in ESI in level-funded plans and 45% reportedly enrolled in either self or level funded plans.
- Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) plans continue to be the most common plan type for those with ESI, with 50% of enrollees.
- Finally, actuarial values for active workers with coverage in their own name remain stable with average plan richness of 86%.
In addition to the data, ARC also produces an annual Health Bulletin for EBSA as well as Technical Documentation supporting the additional variables, which are imputed from a variety of sources, and a User Guide that walks through how tables in both the Health Bulletin and Technical Appendix were constructed. The newest data appends to the March 2025 CPS and are available (along with previous auxiliary data sets back to 2011) here.