My wife is a teacher in NC. We are on her insurance with the state health plan for a whole family. We pay $700/mo for our portion on the 80/20 plan.

I would say they likely do pay $30k+ per employee and 50k isnt a big stretch when you count every benefit as you stated.

https://www.shpnc.org/documents/open-enrollment-documents/sh...

That is the beauty of employer subsidized benefits with preferential tax treatment.

The worker cannot easily compare compensation offered by different employers, so they are less likely to leave. And bigger/more profitable businesses can afford to hire professionals to analyze and implement these benefit plans, while small businesses are left competing for 2nd tier employees since they cannot afford that overhead.

Why someone gets health insurance and retirement savings with pre tax money if their employer subsidizes it and why someone has to pay for health insurance and retirement savings with post tax money if their employer does not subsidize it is a pretty great injustice that neither party is interested in addressing.

One more reason healthcare needs to be divorced from employment.

My company sends out an amount of the value of benefits. For me it was around $30K. It includes all paid holidays and PTO, health care, 401K contributions, and social security contributions.