Employee Well-Being Worsens, Hitting New Records: Gallup

General Motors employees work on Chevrolet pickups at a plant in Flint, Mich., on Feb. 5, 2019. Rebecca Cook/Reuters

The share of American workers who report they’re “thriving” in their lives has dropped to a record low, while the proportion who are “struggling” has surged back to a record high, according to the latest data from Gallup.

The report, released on Nov. 19, highlights a troubling shift in life evaluations among the U.S. workforce, marking a steady decline in well-being indicators over the past four years. In particular, the share of American workers who said they were “suffering,” 4 percent (from a survey in August), was twice as high compared with any year of the Trump presidency.

Gallup’s survey, which first started tracking life evaluation by U.S. employees in 2009, shows that the share of workers who said they were “thriving” hit its peak at 61 percent in both 2016 and 2017. It  started declining in 2019 as the COVID-19 pandemic hit and, aside from a brief rebound in January 2021 as hopes grew for a loosening of restrictions, the downward trend continued. As of August 2024, only 50 percent of U.S. employees rated their lives highly enough to be classified as thriving.

Meanwhile, the percentage of American workers who said they were “struggling” has risen sharply in recent years. As of the latest survey, 45 percent of workers fell into this category, matching a record high notched in May 2023. The share of U.S. employees struggling bottomed at 37 percent in 2016 and 2017. It remained around that mark until the pandemic, when it spiked to 43 percent, before briefly retreating to 38 percent in January 2021 and later embarking on a steady climb.

The percentage of employees considered “suffering” remained steady at 4 percent in the latest survey, the same level as in each year of the Biden presidency except 2022, when it peaked at a record 5 percent. By comparison, in each year between 2016 and 2020, the proportion of U.S. workers who said they were suffering stood at 2 percent—half the current rate.

According to Gallup’s survey methodology, “thriving” respondents have optimistic views about their current life situation and the next five years. Such individuals report fewer health issues and lower levels of negative emotions like stress and depression. They also exhibit higher levels of energy, happiness, hope, and engagement.

The survey’s findings carry important implications for employers, who are increasingly recognizing the connection between employee well-being and productivity. Various studies, including Gallup’s own, show that lower life evaluation scores can translate into decreased engagement, higher absenteeism, and greater turnover.

“We find a significant, strong positive correlation between employees’ satisfaction with their company and employee productivity and customer loyalty, and a strong negative correlation with staff turnover,” wrote the authors of a 2019 meta-analysis of 339 independent research studies, which gauged the well-being of over 1.8 million employees and the performance of over 82,000 business units.

“Ultimately, higher well-being at work is positively correlated with more business-unit level profitability,” the researchers found.

While the exact causes of declining well-being among U.S. workers are difficult to pinpoint, some studies have pointed to factors like economic instability or pandemic-related stressors.