Smaller raise? Higher health insurance costs may be to blame

(NewsNation) — Rising health insurance costs could be the reason your raise was smaller.

Recent surveys by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggest employers are responding to higher insurance costs by scaling back pay increases.

The surveys of businesses in the New York-Northern New Jersey region found that employee health insurance costs rose faster than other business expenses over the past year, with respondents reporting an average increase of more than 13 percent.

“Businesses providing insurance to their workers indicated that absent these cost increases, they would have raised wages by roughly an additional percentage point, on average,” NY Fed researchers wrote in a blog post.

A single percentage point may not sound like much, but it amounts to a roughly 20 percent drag........

© The Hill