Graduating college students might need to look for more than a good salary when conducting their job search.

According to a study recently released by the Economic Policy Institute, employer-provided health insurance has declined for five straight years.

"The biggest decline is the typical working-age person," Elise Gould, author of the study, said. She added that people in their prime working years, including recent college graduates, are less insured than the average population.

She explained that when there are fewer jobs available, workers have less bargaining power for benefits like healthcare offered by employers.

"We've been in somewhat of a weak labor market," Gould said.

The demographic most likely to be uninsured is young adults, said Pamela Short, director of the Center for Health Care and Policy Research at Penn State. Short said one of one of the ironies of college graduates' lack of insurance is that they are among the healthiest people in the country. They are cheaper to insure because there are fewer claims, she said.

"Most people do have health insurance," Short said. She explained that a smaller percentage of Americans each year have health insurance because the rates of premiums are going up at about twice the speed of inflation and wages. One reasons for the increase, she added, is due to the amount of new technology and drugs available to doctors and patients every year. The doctors will recommend these state-of-the-art technologies to the patients, who send the bill to the insurance company, she said.

"In many ways there's overuse in the system," she said, adding that the costs are passed on to the customers as higher premiums.

Shawn Boyd (junior-landscape architecture) said he would alter his job search to find companies that offer health benefits.

"I'd do that because I have asthma," he said, adding that he is currently covered by his father's health insurance, which will expire when he graduates.

Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, a public policy research foundation, wrote in an e-mail message that the use of a middleman is one of the problems in the healthcare industry.

"In the United States, 87 cents out of every dollar spent on healthcare comes from someone other than the patient (either government, employers, insurers, etc.)," he wrote. "It is simply not sustainable to have a sector of the economy where consumers are all spending someone else's money. Rising costs are inevitable," he said.