Summary
Financial capability is an important skill that spans managing daily expenses, navigating financial products, planning for major life decisions such as homeownership, and preparing for retirement, ultimately helping Americans achieve financial stability and enabling them to thrive. Financial education may be one avenue by which to improve financial capability skills, and some employers — who have a vested interest in helping their workers reduce financial stress and achieve financial stability — offer financial education programs in the workplace. This Issue Brief, the first in a three-part series using data from the FINRA Investor Education Foundation’s 2024 National Financial Capability Study (NFCS) and supplemented with survey data from the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s 2025 Workplace Wellness Survey (WWS), examines the associations between workplace-based financial education and workers’ financial knowledge and capability.
Key Findings
- Participation in a workplace-based financial education program tended to be concentrated among workers with high household incomes: More than half of participants had household incomes over $150,000.
- Participants in workplace-based financial education programs were much more likely to rate their financial knowledge as five or higher on a seven-point scale than those who did not participate (85 percent vs. 63 percent).
- On a five-question assessment of financial knowledge, participation in a workplace-based financial education program was associated with a higher score. The positive association remained even while holding variables such as household income and educational attainment constant.
- Workers who had participated in a workplace-based financial education program tended to show higher indicators of financial capability than workers who had not.
- Participants were more likely than non-participants to report spending less than they earned (45 percent vs. 38 percent), being more satisfied with their current personal finances (55 percent vs. 36 percent), and being more likely to feel confident that they could achieve a financial goal (87 percent vs. 73 percent). This positive relationship held even after controlling for household income, educational attainment, and other demographic variables.
Analyses conducted for this Issue Brief suggest a link between workplace-based financial education programs and critical markers of financial capability. Other Issue Briefs in this series will build on these findings to explore other potential effects of participating in workplace-based financial education programs.