Healthcare leaders are facing an increasingly difficult workforce reality: rising turnover, persistent burnout, staffing instability, and growing concerns about care quality.
These challenges are often framed as labor shortages or workload problems. But emerging research suggests a deeper, less visible driver — financial instability among frontline and direct care workers.
Recent findings from Mercer and a 2025 JAMA analysis reveal widespread financial hardship across the healthcare workforce, including poverty, food insecurity, and housing instability — particularly among employees in direct care and support roles.
This isn’t just an employee wellbeing issue. It’s an operational one.
Financial strain contributes to disengagement, turnover, safety risks, and long-term workforce instability. And while many healthcare systems already offer financial wellness programs, retirement benefits, and hardship funds, the evidence suggests these supports are often misaligned with the immediate realities employees face.
As a result, healthcare leaders are asking a more fundamental question: Has employee financial instability become a workforce health issue?
What the data reveals
Mercer’s 2024/2025 Inside Employees’ Minds research highlights a growing disconnect between healthcare workers and the organizations they serve.
Across industries, 78% of salaried employees believe they are compensated fairly. Among salaried healthcare workers, that number drops to 65%.
The gap is even more pronounced for hourly healthcare workers earning under $60,000:
- Fewer than half (46%) believe their pay is fair — 14 points lower than peers in other industries and 6 points lower than the prior year.
- Benefits satisfaction among hourly healthcare workers earning under $60,000 also fell 11 points year over year and now trails their higher-paid peers by 11 points.
Mercer notes that many of these employees are struggling to afford the very care they help deliver.
Clinical research reinforces this picture.
A 2025 JAMA study, summarized by the American Journal of Managed Care, found that financial hardship is common among U.S. healthcare workers, particularly those in direct care and support roles.
- Nearly one in four direct care workers experienced food insecurity
- More than 13% reported housing instability
- Lower-wage employees and racial and ethnic minority groups are disproportionately affected
Additional workforce analyses from the TIAA Institute show these pressures are translating into operational risk.
More than 20% of healthcare employees are at risk of turnover within the next two years. Staffing shortages, burnout, and strain are now widely reported across care settings.
Financial strain is not a fringe issue in healthcare. It is a core workforce challenge with direct implications for retention, equity, and care quality.
Why existing solutions don’t fully meet today’s needs
Most hospital systems already provide meaningful financial benefits, including:
- Traditional financial wellness programs focused on education and long-term planning
- Retirement benefits designed to build future security
- Hardship funds or foundation grants intended for emergency relief
Each plays an important role. But they are designed for different financial moments.
Financial wellness programs and retirement benefits assume a baseline level of stability — the capacity to plan, save, and think long term. For employees struggling with everyday money problems, even the most thoughtful plan for the future offers little relief in the present.
Hardship funds are often the only benefit designed to support emergency money needs. Yet they are typically limited in scope, capped in amount, and restricted by eligibility criteria. While essential, they rarely address the full impact of a financial disruption — or the underlying instability that preceded it.
The result is a practical gap.
Employees may technically have access to multiple benefits, yet still lack the support needed to reduce the day-to-day financial stress that impacts physical and mental health, patient care quality, engagement, and retention.
Hospital systems are rethinking financial support
Many hospital systems are now recognizing that employee financial illness persists, despite the benefits and resources they offer. Common observations include that:
- Financial hardship is often ongoing, not episodic
- Employees’ needs frequently extend beyond a single qualifying event supported by a grant or hardship fund
- Employees who are denied hardship assistance have nowhere else to turn
Over the past year, a growing number of hospital systems have reevaluated how they support employees facing financial strain.
In early 2026, several hospital systems launched new approaches.
The common thread? Recognition that traditional benefits alone are not sufficient to address immediate financial instability among frontline roles.
Rather than replacing existing programs, these hospital systems are better integrating support, ensuring that urgent needs are addressed first—so longer-term benefits can actually take hold.
Questions healthcare leaders are asking
As workforce pressures continue, more healthcare leaders are stepping back to examine the full picture:
- Are financially stressed employees actually getting relief from the benefits available to them?
- What happens to employees who don’t qualify for hardship funds but are still struggling?
- How much administrative time is spent managing hardship and grant processes?
- Are current benefits delivering measurable workforce outcomes tied to retention, safety, and engagement?
These questions reveal an emerging opportunity toward an integrated, human-centered approach to supporting employee financial health.
As workforce pressures mount, forward-thinking hospital systems are rethinking traditional approaches to employee financial support. Many are implementing Brightside Financial Care — a comprehensive benefit that addresses immediate financial instability while strengthening workforce resilience over time.
Learn more about how Brightside partners with healthcare organizations to help fill that gap, meeting caregivers where they are when support matters most.