Student Loan Repayment Assistance: Employers Offering SLRA

If you’re carrying student debt, you may not realize that your employer could be helping you pay it down. Many companies now offer student loan repayment assistance (SLRA) as part of their benefits package and understanding how it works can make a big difference in your debt payoff strategy.

A growing trend in the last few years has been for employers to offer student loan repayment assistance to employees as a benefit. Unlike tuition reimbursement (which has been around for years), student loan repayment assistance is a relatively new concept, but one that is gaining traction.

According to the Society For Human Resource Management, about 14% of companies offered some type of assistance program to help employees pay down their student debt (up from 4% in 2019). But one thing is for sure, that number is growing.

Given the fact that roughly 43 million people have student loans, and that the U.S. Workforce is roughly 144 million people, that means almost 1 in 3 workers has student loans. For employers, helping their employees get out of student loan debt just makes sense. That's why some are even offering student loan 401k matching too.

But let's dive into student loan repayment assistance programs specifically.