Long-term care can be costly, extending well beyond $100,000. Yet, financial advisors say many households aren’t prepared to manage the expense.

“People don’t plan for it in advance,” said Carolyn McClanahan, a physician and certified financial planner based in Jacksonville, Florida. “It’s a huge problem.”

Over half, 57%, of Americans who turn 65 today will develop a disability serious enough to require long-term care, according to a 2022 report published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Urban Institute. Such disabilities might include cognitive or nervous system disorders like dementia, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease, or complications from a stroke, for example.

The average future cost of long-term care for someone turning 65 today is about $122,400, the HHS-Urban report said.

But some people need care for many years, pushing lifetime costs well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars — a sum “out of reach for many Americans,” report authors Richard Johnson and Judith Dey wrote.

The number of people who need care is expected to swell as the U.S. population ages amid increasing longevity.

“It’s pretty clear [workers] don’t have that amount of savings in retirement, that amount of savings in their checking or savings accounts, and the majority don’t have long-term care insurance,” said Bridget Bearden, a research and development strategist at the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

“So where is the money going to come from?” she added.

Nationally, it costs about $6,300 a month for a home health aide and $9,700 for a private room in a nursing home for the typical person, according to 2023 data from Genworth, an insurer.

It seems many households are unaware of the potential costs, either for themselves or their loved ones.

For example, 73% of workers say there’s at least one adult for whom they may need to provide long-term care in the future, according to a new poll by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

However, just 29% of these future caregivers — who may wind up footing at least part of the future bill —had estimated the future cost of care, EBRI found. Of those who did, 37% thought the price tag would fall below $25,000 a year, the group said.

The EBRI survey polled 2,445 employees from ages 20 to 74 years old in late 2024.

For example, Medicare may partially cover “skilled” care for the first 100 days, said McClanahan, the founder of Life Planning Partners and a member of CNBC’s Financial Advisor Council. This may be when a patient requires a nurse to help with rehab or administer medicine, for example, she said.

But Medicare doesn’t cover “custodial” care, when someone needs help with daily activities like bathing, dressing, using the bathroom and eating, McClanahan said. These basic everyday tasks constitute the majority of long-term care needs, according to the HHS-Urban report.

Medicaid is the largest payer of long-term care costs today, Bearden said. Not everyone qualifies, though: Many people who get Medicaid benefits are from lower-income households, EBRI’s Bearden said. To receive benefits for long-term care, households may first have to exhaust a big chunk of their financial assets.

“You basically have to be destitute,” McClanahan said.

Republicans in Washington are weighing cuts to Medicaid as part of a large tax-cut package. If successful, it’d likely be harder for Americans to get Medicaid benefits for long-term care, experts said.

Few households have insurance policies that specifically hedge against long-term care risk: About 7.5 million Americans had some form of long-term care insurance coverage in 2020, according to the Congressional Research Service.

By comparison, more than 4 million baby boomers are expected to retire per year from 2024 to 2027.

Washington state has a public long-term care insurance program for residents, and other states like California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania are exploring their own.

Long-term care insurance policies make most sense for people who have a high risk of needing care for a lengthy duration, McClanahan said. That may include those who have a high risk of dementia or have longevity in their family history, she said.

McClanahan recommends opting for a hybrid insurance policy that combines life insurance and a long-term care benefit; traditional stand-alone policies only meant for long-term care are generally expensive, she said.

Be wary of how the policy pays benefits, too, she said.

For example, “reimbursement” policies require the insured to choose from a list of preferred providers and submit receipts for reimbursement, McClanahan said. For some, especially seniors, that may be difficult without assistance, she said.

With “indemnity” policies, which McClanahan recommends, insurers generally write benefit checks as soon as the insured qualifies for assistance, and they can spend the money how they see fit. However, the benefit amount is often lower than reimbursement policies, she said.

College commencement is a time of optimism for newly minted graduates. But this year, there’s also more uncertainty about the economy and employment — and grads in some unexpected majors may find they have a leg up.

Majors in nutrition, art history and philosophy all outperformed STEM fields when it comes to employment prospects, according to a recent analysis of labor market outcomes of college graduates by major by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

For computer science and computer engineering, the unemployment rate in those fields was 6.1% and 7.5%, respectively — notably higher than the national average.

By comparison, the unemployment rate for art history majors was 3%, and for nutritional sciences, the unemployment rate was just 0.4%, the New York Fed found. The New York Fed’s report was based on Census data from 2023 and unemployment rates of recent college graduates.

Economics and finance majors also fared worse than those in theology and philosophy when it came to the employment rates for recent college graduates, according to the New York Fed.

In general, what you choose to major in has significant implications for your job prospects and future earnings potential.

Majoring in STEM is often touted as the ticket to a well-paying position in good times and bad, and that is mostly true.

In fact, students who pursue a major specifically in computer science or computer engineering — both STEM disciplines — are projected to earn the most right out of school with median wages of $80,000.

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Is college still worth it? It is for most, but not all

Even so, demand for humanities majors is on the rise, and with good reason, despite some student debt critics taking aim at the low value of some coursework, like “zombie studies,” for example.

At a conference last year, Robert Goldstein, the chief operating officer of BlackRock, the world’s biggest money manager, said the firm was adjusting its hiring strategy for recent grads. “We have more and more conviction that we need people who majored in history, in English, and things that have nothing to do with finance or technology,” Goldstein said.

This demand for liberal arts degrees is due in part to the rise of AI, which drives the need for creative thinking and so-called soft skills. 

Meanwhile, jobs in the the health care sector continue to be in high demand in 2025.

The U.S. economy added 902,000 health care and social assistance jobs last year and employment in health care occupations is “projected to grow much faster than the average” for all U.S. jobs through 2033, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The unemployment rate among nursing majors is just 1.4%, the New York Fed also found.

“Nursing is extremely resilient in times of economic uncertainty, like we ae seeing right now,” said Travis Moore, a registered nurse and healthcare strategist at job site Indeed.

Although the median wage right out of school [for nurses] is lower than it is for economics and finance majors, heading into a possible economic downturn, job security may be a more important measure, he said.

“There’s a significant nursing shortage going on right now,” Moore said — and that “creates a really strong opportunity to get into a career with really low layoffs.”

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New college graduates looking for work now are finding a tighter labor market than they expected even a few months ago.

The unemployment rate for recent college grads reached 5.8% in March, up from 4.6% the same time a year ago, according to an April report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 

Job postings at Handshake, a campus recruiting platform, are down 15% over the past year, while the number of applications has risen by 30%. 

Christine Cruzvergara, chief education strategy officer at Handshake, says new grads are finding a “tough and competitive” market.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty and certainly a lot of competition for the current graduates that are coming into the job market,” she said.

While the job creation in the U.S. has continued to show signs of strength, policy changes have driven the uncertainty.

President Donald Trump has frozen federal hiring and done mass firings of government workers. Evercore ISI, an investment bank, estimated earlier this month that 350,000 federal workers have been impacted by cuts from Department of Government Efficiency, representing roughly 15% of federal workers, with layoffs set to take effect over the coming months.

“In early January, the class of 2025 was on track to meet and even exceed the number of applications to federal government jobs,” Cruzvergara said. When the executive orders hit in mid-January there was  “a pretty steep decline all of a sudden, she said.

“The federal government is one of the largest employers in this country, and also one of the largest employers for entry-level employees as well,” said Loujaina Abdelwahed, senior economist at Revelio Labs, a workforce intelligence firm.

On-again, off-again tariff policies have created uncertainty for companies, with a third of chief executive officers in a recent CNBC survey expecting to cut jobs this year because of the import taxes.

Job losses from artificial intelligence technology are also a concern.

A majority, 62%, of the Class of 2025 are concerned about what AI will mean for their jobs, compared to 44% two years ago, according to a survey by Handshake. Graduates in the humanities and computer science are the most worried about AI’s impact on jobs.

“I think it’s more about a redefinition of the entry level than it is about an elimination of the entry level,” Cruzvergara said.

Postings for jobs in hospitality, education services, and sales were showing monthly growth through March, according to Revelio Labs. But almost all industries, with the exception of information jobs, saw pullbacks in April.

For new grads hunting for a job, experts advise keeping a positive mindset.

“Employers don’t want to hire someone that they feel like is desperate or bitter or upset,” said Cruzvergara. “They want to hire someone that still feels like there’s a lot of opportunity, there’s a lot of potential.”

Here are two tactics that can help with your search:

1. Look at small firms — they may provide big opportunities

Companies with fewer than 250 employees may offer better opportunities to grow and learn than bigger “brand name” firms, according to Revelio Labs.

A new study by Revelio found that five years into their careers, graduates had comparable salary progression,  promotion timelines, and managerial prospects — regardless of the size of their first employer. However, people who started their careers at small companies were 1.5 times more likely to become founders of their own companies later in their careers.

The study looked at individuals who earned bachelor’s degrees in the U.S. between 2015 and 2022, following their career paths post-graduation.

While some young workers may have entered start-ups with the goal of starting their own firm in the future, Abdelwahed said there’s often an opportunity at smaller companies to be given responsibilities beyond the job’s role. 

“Because the company’s small and the work needs to get done, so they just start to develop this entrepreneurship drive,” Abdelwahed said.

2. Network and use informational interviews

Experts also urge recent grads to reach out to people working in industries that pique their interest.

“Take an interest in someone else. Ask them questions about how they got to where they are, what they’ve learned, what you should know about that particular industry, what are emerging trends or issues that are facing them in the field right now,” said Cruzvergara.

This approach can help you sound more knowledgeable in the application and interviewing process.

— CNBC’s Sharon Epperson contributed reporting.

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