Some workers are job hopping for fertility benefits. Employers are trying to keep up.
Laura Muller started looking for a new job in 2023 to give her dream of starting a family a fighting chance.
A 38-year-old licensed veterinary technician, Muller loved the field but was willing to take just about any job that would cover in vitro fertilization, or IVF, treatment, be it Starbucks or Tractor Supply. In job interviews, she said, one of the first questions she’d ask was: “Tell me more about your fertility coverage.”
She landed a job as an emergency veterinary nurse, and after four rounds of intrauterine insemination − a fertility treatment that places prepared sperm in a uterus − and four egg retrievals, Muller’s first embryo transfer was a success. She’s expecting a boy in June.
“I'm just thankful we were able to get here,” said Muller, who lives in Philadelphia. “I feel like it was a Herculean effort, but it was definitely worth it.”
As baby boomers retire and a new generation of workers takes center stage in the workforce, employers are reconsidering what it means to care for their employees’ well-being. Fertility care coverage and child care benefits are among the most expensive for companies. But they're also some of the most sought-after perks for millennials, who represent the largest segment of the U.S. workforce, and employers are noticing.
Maven Clinic, a virtual clinic for women's and family health, recently surveyed more than 1,500 human resources leaders and nearly 4,000 full-time employees and found 69% of employees have taken, considered or might take a new job for better reproductive and family benefits. The same percentage of employers plan to increase their family health benefits vendors in the next two to three years.
Gallagher, an insurance and employee benefits consulting company, produced similar findings in its own report, when 63% of the nearly 700 employees surveyed said they would change jobs for better benefits. Among millennials, nearly 40% identify as parents and prioritize family-forming benefits, child care and education support. Overall employee interest in pregnancy and fertility resources jumped from 5% in 2022 to 13% in 2024.
It's not just women who need access to fertility care, Maven Clinic CEO Kate Ryder said. Her company started providing at-home sperm analysis kits last year, and she said they've been hugely popular.
The definition of family, and how adults are starting ones of their own, is evolving, said Kathleen Schulz, Gallagher’s global innovation leader for organizational well-being. There are single parents, blended families, adopted children and surrogates who need care, too.
“The way that we think about family now, it’s different than the way that we thought about it 20 years ago,” Schulz said. “And employers kind of need to lean into that in a more inclusive way. The struggle is that the way that an employer may want to define family may be a little bit different than the regulatory bodies that are defining families."
Barbara Collura, CEO and president of the infertility advocacy organization Resolve, said the organization “absolutely” sees people switching companies, moving states or taking on a second job to access fertility benefits.
“If you are struggling to build your family, and you have been told that the only option for you to have a chance at having children is a medical treatment that is going to be, out of pocket, $15,000 to $25,000 for one cycle ... that’s a tall order,” Collura said.
Sister CEOs go viral for child care coverage, 'want to do more' for working moms
Mercer, another consulting firm, also found more employers are covering IVF and other family benefits like paid parental leave. Mercer's survey of 630 U.S. organizations found 62% now offer bereavement leave for pregnancy loss, and 58% offer bereavement leave for miscarriage.
Taylor Capuano, who co-founded Cakes Body, a bra alternative brand, with her sister, said offering women- and family-focused benefits is a top priority for their company, which has grown in the past year from 10 to 30 employees. A video of the sisters announcing full child care coverage for employees with kids too young to go to school went viral in May.
Women who responded to the video were emotional, Capuano said. It proved to her that most women don’t feel seen or heard by their employers. She knows she didn’t when she worked in corporate America.
“I just remember looking at my expenses, being like: ‘Wait a minute. I don’t think I’m going to be able to make sense of staying in the workforce.’ Because I was pretty much breaking even on working versus paying for my child care," she said.
“It was always a goal of mine to be able to create an environment where I, personally, could afford to live and be a mom. But I never really expected to have employees.”
Capuano said she and her sister are still trying to figure out best practices for creating conducive working environments for parents. They encourage flexible work hours so parents can schedule work around family responsibilities. They also offer four months of full-paid parental leave, which is a rarity. And Cakes Body’s new child care stipend policy covers up to $3,000 a month, which is enough to support two kids’ child care in most states.
Cakes Body doesn’t have fertility care coverage yet, Capuano said, but she and her sister “want to do more” for women and parents.
Some families worry having a child is out of their budget
Fertility treatment coverage is becoming increasingly common: IVF was covered by 47% of large employers with at least 500 employees in 2024, up two percentage points from the year before, according to a Mercer survey of more than 2,000 employers. Of the largest companies – those with 20,000 or more employees – 70% cover IVF.
“Some of it has to do with attraction and retention,” said Lindsay Bower, senior principal in Mercer’s health and benefits team. “Especially in industries that are really competing for talent.”
The most common reason why employers don’t provide fertility care coverage, according to Gallagher’s report, is cost. Maven Clinic's report also found the financial burden of fertility care has reached a breaking point. Employers who already provide fertility care coverage are concerned about rising costs, and 28% of employees pursuing fertility treatment incurred debt to cover the cost.
Christina Parker understands the eye-popping cost of IVF all too well. After an endocervical cancer diagnosis in 2021 resulted in the loss of her fallopian tubes, Parker knew the more affordable intrauterine insemination would no longer be an option; she and her wife would have to pay up for IVF so they could carry a child.
Parker worried out-of-pocket costs would be out of her price range. The fertility treatment – in which eggs are collected from an ovary, fertilized by sperm in a lab and then transferred to a uterus – can run more than $10,000 a cycle, and some patients require multiple cycles for a successful birth.
After some digging, she learned pharmacy chain Walgreens offers fertility coverage, and there was a location 10 minutes from her home in Asheville, North Carolina, that was hiring. The pharmacy technician role paid $6 less an hour than her hotel job and Parker had no industry experience, but she decided to give it a shot.
It worked. Parker was hired and started IVF in 2022, and after two unsuccessful rounds, she gave birth to a son in May 2023.
Parker, 29, estimates she and her wife spent about $7,000 out of pocket for three IVF cycles, including preimplantation genetic testing. An estimated $75,000 was covered by insurance.
Now, she said, she looks to see if potential employers have fertility benefits or maternity care before applying.
“If you don't, chances are I’m not going to.”
Madeline Mitchell's role covering women and the caregiving economy at Paste BN is supported by a partnership with Pivotal Ventures and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input. Reach Madeline at memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ on X.