Kristi Kennebrew knows firsthand how transformative GLP-1 medications can be — and just how much getting employer coverage for them can make or break a budget.

Kennebrew began taking Mounjaro in December 2022, which was covered 100% by her employer at the time, and says she went from weighing about 265 pounds down to 185 over about a year. The weight loss helped her feel more confident, more social and more energetic, she says.

She lost coverage at the beginning of 2024 after she was let go from her job, so she went cold turkey until she got a prescription in early 2025 for another drug to the tune of $399 per month. Finally, in the fall of 2025, Kennebrew landed a new job in recruitment marketing. Her employer-sponsored health insurance covers GLP-1s under a coaching program, and she pays just $25 out of pocket monthly.

Working for a company that covers the majority of her GLP-1 costs "provides comfort," Kennebrew, 31, of Dallas tells CNBC Make It.

Some 11% of U.S. adults say they're currently taking a GLP-1 medication specifically for weight loss in 2026, up from 3% in 2024, according to Gallup.

Employer-sponsored insurance is the largest source of health coverage for Americans under 65, covering more than 165 million people in March 2025. For millions of workers, whether their insurance covers a GLP-1 can depend largely on their employer.

Some companies are embracing it. Walmart plans to cover more than 250 prescription medications, including GLP-1s for diabetes, at no cost to its employees in 2027, while Bank of America is spending more than $250 million a year to provide GLP-1 weight loss meds to its workforce.

Others are scaling back: An early 2026 survey of 105 employer members of the nonprofit Business Group on Health found that while two-thirds of them were covering GLP-1s for weight management, 10% of those companies said they would likely drop that coverage in 2027.

As GLP-1 use reaches new highs, employers are grappling with whether the benefits of covering these medications justify their high costs.

Workers see benefits from using weight loss meds Companies that cover these meds could have an advantage. According to a December survey of 545 workers from virtual health clinic 9amHealth, a majority of workers, 73%, said GLP-1 coverage was an important factor for taking or staying at a job, and 31% would change jobs to gain coverage.

Several people who spoke with Make It say taking weight loss medications has a number of benefits: Better sleep, more energy and sharper focus with less food noise that makes them obsess over food. Others say the physical changes also give them a confidence boost that motivates them to chase new opportunities they wouldn't have otherwise.

When it comes to the workplace, early research suggests GLP-1 use could affect who gets hired.

One working paper by Harvard economist Rebecca Diamond, which hasn't been peer reviewed, found women who were unemployed increased their likelihood of landing a job by 26.9 percentage points after 18 months of taking a GLP-1, compared with women who wanted to take the medication but hadn't.

Women who were already working didn't appear to work more hours or gain new promotions after starting GLP-1s. One possible factor may be that weight bias makes a bigger difference when employers are making hiring decisions and forming first impressions than when evaluating workers they already know.

Weight stigma in the workplace tends to be more pronounced for women than for men, says Rebecca Puhl, a distinguished professor in the department of human development and family sciences at the University of Connecticut.

"In our society, thinness has come to symbolize very strong values" like self-discipline, willpower and motivation, Puhl says. "And if people have a higher body weight that doesn't conform to those ideals, they can be negatively stereotyped as lacking in those characteristics."

"Employers are not immune to those broader societal attitudes," she says, and "those assumptions can influence hiring decisions." Kennebrew in Dallas says her weight has fluctuated over the years while on different GLP-1 drugs. It can be tough to acknowledge, but she says she felt "at her prime" at her lowest weight, and that she got more requests to appear at conferences or do public speaking events at a smaller size.

"Not only was I smaller, but I was a lot more confident in myself too," she says. "I don't know if I would have felt as confident or really [been] picked for that opportunity if I was bigger." Scott Schilling says dropping 38 pounds since starting a GLP-1 in April helped him confront both weight bias and ageism at work. Schilling, 68, of Dallas was recently interviewing for new sales jobs and recalls being told that he was more energetic than his interviewers expected him to be.

"The mental side of releasing the weight and moving forward again reinvigorates you to be able to take on the world at the time where the world has not made it easy for those over 50," he says.

Potential labor market impacts GLP-1 use may help workers spend less time away from their jobs. Another recent working paper published in July by the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at patients taking GLP-1s in Denmark. Given the medication's ability to improve metabolic and cardiovascular health and provide other benefits, researchers were interested in whether GLP-1 use could improve "work capacity" and impact the labor market, says Jonathan Zhang, assistant professor of public policy at Duke University.

Researchers found in that working paper that GLP-1 treatment for weight loss reduced long-term sickness leave, defined as illness-related absences lasting more than 30 days, by 17.3%. That could have big economic consequences. In Denmark, the reduced sick leave saved employers and the public sector the equivalent of about $722 per year for each employed person receiving treatment.

Meanwhile, chronic diseases, including diabetes, which GLP-1 medications can treat, are projected to cost the U.S. an average of $900 billion annually in lost employee productivity.

There are some caveats: The research findings apply to Denmark and may not translate directly to the U.S. "It's a bit of a speculation," Zhang says.

Access to weight loss coverage is up in the air GLP-1 users are already rearranging their spending to make room for health costs. Roughly half, 51%, of current GLP-1 users worry they may have to choose between their meds and saving enough for retirement, while others have taken on debt, pulled money from savings or cut their retirement contributions to cover the cost of these medications, according to an October report from Nationwide Retirement Institute.

Many users are making room for the costs now but may not be able to keep it up in the long term. Megan Tuano in Pittsburgh began taking Zepbound in August and has paid for her $300 monthly doses (after a coupon) out of pocket, as her insurance doesn't cover it and neither did her husband's. He was recently laid off and is now looking for a new role. Tuano says they're paying closer attention to whether prospective employers offer any coverage for weight loss drugs. They'd take lower paying jobs if they had more comprehensive health insurance coverage in general, including for coverage of GLP-1 meds, Tuano says.

"What stands out to me most is access," Tuano says. "If these medications do open doors, it worries me that the people who could benefit most may be the ones who can't afford them." So far, studies haven't established that GLP-1 treatments pay for themselves through lower medical spending in the short term. Employers, meanwhile, are trying to figure out if it's worth the high cost to cover GLP-1s for their employees. Some are reconsidering their coverage.

In a March survey, nearly eight in 10 employers told Business Group on Health that GLP-1s are driving an increase in their company's healthcare costs. The average employer-provided family health insurance plan cost $28,303 in 2026, up by 5% from a year ago, according to an October report from KFF, a health policy nonprofit. Insurance cost per employee is expected to rise 8.2% on average in 2027, according to a Marsh survey of over 1,800 U.S. employers from the summer, with GLP-1 use accounting for a full percentage point of the overall increase.

"This market's changed so quickly in the past year that we should expect it to continue to change" with pricing changes and new drugs on the horizon, says Paul Fronstin, director of health benefits research at the Employee Benefit Research Institute. "On the one hand, you could argue that as the prices come down, employers are going to be more likely to cover it. But on the other hand, the genie's already out of the bottle in terms of a lot of workers already paying for this out of their own pocket."