
An increasing number of employers are offering student loan repayment benefits as a recruitment tool, Bloomberg reported.
The share of job descriptions on job site Handshake mentioning student loan repayment programs has more than doubled since 2019, the site reported, “as companies look for ways to distinguish themselves with top talent and relieve the pressure student loans place on early-career hires.”
The timing is fortuitous. President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in June, and the administration then rolled out a new income-driven repayment tool last week.
Christine Cruzvergara, Handshake's chief education strategy officer, said that she expected to see more employers start offering the benefit in the next year or two, as student loan payments worth about $1.5 trillion resume for some 28 million U.S. borrowers, according to Bloomberg.
Some company-sponsored student loan repayment assistance has been around for years. Fidelity Investments, for example, began providing assistance in 2016 and has increased its benefit. Eligible staff who work at least 30 hours a week can access up to $15,000 over seven years’ worth of monthly payments. That perquisite helps with higher retention of younger career employees, benefits head Megan Bourque, told Bloomberg.
Cruzvergara agreed. “Student loans impact [indebted young employees’] ability to settle down, their ability to buy a home and their ability to, quite frankly, kickstart their entire life,” she told Bloomberg. “It’s such a large swath of our graduating class now that it's undeniably an issue for an entire generation.”
She added that it might be wise for companies in fields perceived as less flashy to adopt this benefit, and she included accounting among them. “Because if you're not going to be able to necessarily appeal to the fun, energetic, sexy sort of vibe of your industry, you might as well appeal to the practicalness of what it is,” she said. “I think we're going to start to see it come into play in more industries.”
Yet even with the recent surge in the number of student loan repayment benefits appearing in job listings, they are still fairly rare: They appear in only 3 percent of job posts, Bloomberg reported.