Employee Wellbeing and Burnout Statistics 2026

How to read this page: every figure names its source and year. Survey results, official statistics, vendor claims and figures from our own directory are labeled separately, because they are not equally reliable.

How common is daily stress at work around the world?

Gallup's global worker survey is the longest-running comparable series on daily emotions at work, and it measures stress as an experience on the previous day rather than as a diagnosis. Regional figures use three years of pooled polling, so treat them as broad bands.

1. In 2025, 40% of employed adults worldwide reported experiencing a lot of stress the previous day, unchanged from 2024 and below the 44% peak recorded in 2021 and 2022.Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026 (employed adults, 2025 data, 141,444 employed respondents), 2025Survey
2. Daily anger among employed adults worldwide rose to 22% in 2025 from 21% in 2024, while daily sadness stayed at 23% and daily loneliness at 22%.Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026 (employed adults, 2025 data, 141,444 employed respondents), 2025Survey
3. Managers reported daily stress of 45% in 2025 against 39% for individual contributors, and daily thriving of 40% against 32%.Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026 (employed adults, 2025 data, 141,444 employed respondents), 2025Survey
4. Daily stress was highest in the United States and Canada at 50% of employees, followed by Australia and New Zealand at 49% and the Middle East and North Africa at 48%.Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026 (employed adults, 2025 data, 141,444 employed respondents), 2025Survey
5. Leaders reported more daily stress than individual contributors by 7 points, more anger by 12 points, more sadness by 11 points and more loneliness by 10 points.Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026 (leaders versus individual contributors, 2025), 2025Survey
6. Only 34% of employees worldwide were thriving in their own life evaluation in 2025, up from 33% in 2024 and below the 2022 peak of 35%.Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026 (employed adults, 2025 data, 141,444 employed respondents), 2025Survey
7. Thriving was lowest in South Asia at 16% and Sub-Saharan Africa at 18%, and highest in Latin America and the Caribbean at 56%.Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026 (employed adults, 2025 data, 141,444 employed respondents), 2025Survey

How many workers report burnout symptoms?

Burnout figures swing with the question asked. The U.S. SHRM series below uses direct self-report items, while the WHO definition gives the formal frame for what burnout is and is not.

1. The WHO's ICD-11 describes burn-out as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, with three dimensions: exhaustion, mental distance or cynicism toward one's job, and reduced professional efficacy.Source: WHO, Burn-out an occupational phenomenon (ICD-11 definition), 2019Official statistics
2. 44% of 1,405 surveyed U.S. workers said they felt burned out from their work in early 2024.Source: SHRM, Employee Mental Health in 2024 (1,405 U.S. workers, unweighted online panel, fielded Jan 30 to Feb 1, 2024), 2024Survey
3. 45% of the same U.S. sample said they felt emotionally drained by their work, and 51% said they felt used up at the end of the workday.Source: SHRM, Employee Mental Health in 2024 (1,405 U.S. workers, unweighted online panel, fielded Jan 30 to Feb 1, 2024), 2024Survey
4. Burned-out U.S. workers were nearly three times as likely to be actively job hunting as workers who did not report burnout: 45% versus 16%.Source: SHRM, Employee Mental Health in 2024 (1,405 U.S. workers, unweighted online panel, fielded Jan 30 to Feb 1, 2024), 2024Survey
5. Among U.S. adults worried about a downturn, 42% said work stress makes it hard to sleep.Source: APA, 2025 Work in America survey (Harris Poll, 2,017 U.S. employed adults, Mar 26 to Apr 4, 2025), 2025Survey
6. 31% of U.S. workers said they often or always feel stressed by their job in SHRM's 2025 workplace mental health research.Source: SHRM, 2025 Workplace Mental Health research, as reported in the May 2025 Executive Network forum summary (sample size not stated), 2025Survey

What does work-related stress cost in lost days and lives?

Official statistics turn stress into counts of days and deaths. They rely on self-reports or modeled estimates, so they describe scale rather than precise causes.

1. An estimated 12 billion workdays are lost every year to depression and anxiety, at a cost of nearly US$1 trillion to the global economy.Source: WHO and ILO joint call for action on mental health at work (September 2022), 2022Official statistics
2. In 2019, 15% of the one billion people living with a mental disorder worldwide were working-age adults.Source: WHO and ILO joint call for action on mental health at work (September 2022), citing the World Mental Health Report, 2019Official statistics
3. Only 35% of countries reported national programs for work-related mental health promotion and prevention in the WHO Mental Health Atlas.Source: WHO and ILO joint call for action on mental health at work (September 2022), citing the WHO Mental Health Atlas, 2022Official statistics
4. More than 840,000 people die each year from health conditions linked to psychosocial risks at work, mainly cardiovascular disease and mental disorders including suicide.Source: ILO, The psychosocial working environment: Global developments and pathways for action (April 2026), 2026Official statistics
5. Psychosocial risks at work cost nearly 45 million disability-adjusted life years each year, and the ILO puts the economic cost at 1.37% of global GDP.Source: ILO, The psychosocial working environment: Global developments and pathways for action (April 2026), 2026Official statistics
6. The ILO estimate rests on five risk factors: job strain, effort-reward imbalance, job insecurity, long working hours, and workplace bullying and harassment.Source: ILO, The psychosocial working environment: Global developments and pathways for action (April 2026), 2026Official statistics
7. Gallup estimates that low employee engagement cost about $10 trillion in lost productivity, or 9% of global GDP.Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026 (estimate published April 2026), 2025Study

What do official statistics show for Great Britain?

The UK Health and Safety Executive publishes the most detailed national count of work-related stress, depression and anxiety, built from Labour Force Survey self-reports.

1. In 2024/25, 964,000 workers in Great Britain suffered from work-related stress, depression or anxiety, out of 1.9 million workers with any work-related illness.Source: HSE (Great Britain), Labour Force Survey estimates, 2024/25, 2025Official statistics
2. Stress, depression or anxiety accounted for 52% of workers with work-related ill health in 2024/25, ahead of musculoskeletal disorders at 27% and other illness at 21%.Source: HSE (Great Britain), Labour Force Survey estimates, 2024/25, 2025Official statistics
3. Work-related stress, depression or anxiety caused 22.1 million lost working days in 2024/25, an average of 22.9 days per case.Source: HSE (Great Britain), Labour Force Survey estimates, 2024/25, 2025Official statistics
4. Of the 40.1 million working days lost in 2024/25, 35.7 million came from work-related ill health and 4.4 million from non-fatal workplace injuries.Source: HSE (Great Britain), Labour Force Survey estimates, 2024/25, 2025Official statistics

What drives stress: workload, job insecurity and constant interruption?

Surveys of U.S. and international knowledge workers point to workload, insecurity and fragmented days as the pressure sources. See our guide on preventing team burnout for what managers can do about them.

1. 54% of U.S. employed adults said job insecurity significantly affected their work stress in the spring 2025 Harris Poll for the APA.Source: APA, 2025 Work in America survey (Harris Poll, 2,017 U.S. employed adults, Mar 26 to Apr 4, 2025), 2025Survey
2. 44% of U.S. employed adults worried an economic downturn could lead to layoffs within the year, up from 36% in 2024.Source: APA, 2025 Work in America survey (Harris Poll, 2,017 U.S. employed adults, Mar 26 to Apr 4, 2025), 2025Survey
3. 65% of U.S. employed adults said their organization had been affected by recent government policy changes.Source: APA, 2025 Work in America survey (Harris Poll, 2,017 U.S. employed adults, Mar 26 to Apr 4, 2025), 2025Survey
4. Among workers whose organizations were drastically or significantly affected by policy changes, 27% reported emotional exhaustion in the past month, against 18% where there was no effect.Source: APA, 2025 Work in America survey (Harris Poll, 2,017 U.S. employed adults, Mar 26 to Apr 4, 2025), 2025Survey
5. Employees at affected organizations also reported more difficulty focusing: 23% for drastic or significant impact versus 13% with no impact.Source: APA, 2025 Work in America survey (Harris Poll, 2,017 U.S. employed adults, Mar 26 to Apr 4, 2025), 2025Survey
6. Employees in the Microsoft 365 data are interrupted every two minutes during core work hours, which the report puts at 275 interruptions a day when a 24-hour day is counted; the figure comes from the top 20% of users by ping volume.Source: Microsoft, Work Trend Index special report 'Breaking down the infinite workday' (31,000 knowledge workers in 31 markets, Feb to Mar 2025), 2025Vendor claim
7. 48% of employees and 52% of leaders said their work feels chaotic and fragmented.Source: Microsoft, Work Trend Index special report 'Breaking down the infinite workday' (31,000 knowledge workers in 31 markets, Feb to Mar 2025), 2025Vendor claim
8. One in three employees said the pace of work over the past five years has made it impossible to keep up.Source: Microsoft, Work Trend Index special report 'Breaking down the infinite workday' (31,000 knowledge workers in 31 markets, Feb to Mar 2025), 2025Vendor claim
9. 29% of active workers are back in their inboxes by 10 pm, and the average worker receives 117 emails a day.Source: Microsoft, Work Trend Index special report 'Breaking down the infinite workday' (31,000 knowledge workers in 31 markets, Feb to Mar 2025), 2025Vendor claim

Does work help or hurt mental health, and do workers use the support offered?

The SHRM 2024 U.S. sample is unweighted and comes from an online panel, so it shows direction rather than a population estimate.

1. 35% of surveyed U.S. workers said their job has a negative effect on their mental health.Source: SHRM, Employee Mental Health in 2024 (1,405 U.S. workers, unweighted online panel, fielded Jan 30 to Feb 1, 2024), 2024Survey
2. 52% of the same U.S. workers felt pressured to put their organization's well-being ahead of their own.Source: SHRM, Employee Mental Health in 2024 (1,405 U.S. workers, unweighted online panel, fielded Jan 30 to Feb 1, 2024), 2024Survey
3. Half of surveyed U.S. workers (50%) did not feel comfortable using or asking for mental health resources at their organization.Source: SHRM, Employee Mental Health in 2024 (1,405 U.S. workers, unweighted online panel, fielded Jan 30 to Feb 1, 2024), 2024Survey
4. To protect their well-being, 34% of U.S. workers had taken a lower-paying job, 26% had pursued a different career, and 22% had left a job with no next role lined up.Source: SHRM, Employee Mental Health in 2024 (1,405 U.S. workers, unweighted online panel, fielded Jan 30 to Feb 1, 2024), 2024Survey
5. 33% of people managers in the SHRM sample said their leadership role is not worth the stress, and 40% said their mental health declined after they became a manager or leader.Source: SHRM, Employee Mental Health in 2024 (1,405 U.S. workers, unweighted online panel, fielded Jan 30 to Feb 1, 2024), 2024Survey
6. 67% of U.S. workers were unaware or only somewhat aware of their company's mental health resources, and 55% felt their company offers too few.Source: SHRM, Employee Mental Health in 2024 Research Series, as reported in the May 2025 Executive Network forum summary (sample size not stated), 2024Survey
7. 30% of U.S. workers said they would accept a pay cut in exchange for better mental health support at work.Source: SHRM, 2025 Workplace Mental Health research, as reported in the May 2025 Executive Network forum summary (sample size not stated), 2025Survey
8. Globally, 1 in 5 workers said their job had negatively affected their mental health, 43% said it had a positive effect and 37% said no effect.Source: SHRM, 2025 Global Worker Project, as reported in the May 2025 Executive Network forum summary (sample size not stated), 2025Survey
9. Only 17% of HR professionals said their organizations assess the effectiveness of mental health resources, and 85% of organizations that do evaluate report measurable benefits.Source: SHRM, 2025 Workplace Mental Health research, as reported in the May 2025 Executive Network forum summary (sample size not stated), 2025Survey

Methodology

We used pages we opened directly: Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026, the WHO and ILO releases, the Health and Safety Executive statistics pages for Great Britain, the American Psychological Association's 2025 Work in America results as published in its press release, SHRM's 2024 and 2025 mental health research, and a Microsoft Work Trend Index special report. Each fact gives the data year, or the publication year when the source does not state fieldwork dates, and is labeled survey, study, official or vendor-claim.

Limits: Gallup measures stress as an experience on the previous day, SHRM and APA use U.S. self-reports, and HSE counts self-reported conditions from the Labour Force Survey, so figures are not interchangeable. The SHRM 2024 sample is unweighted. Several SHRM figures are taken from a SHRM Executive Network forum summary that does not state sample sizes.

Microsoft's data covers Microsoft 365 users and excludes education and EU tenants, and its own page gives two values for the share of ad hoc meetings, so we left that figure out. We excluded figures that we could only see in search snippets, including EU-OSHA, Eurofound, McKinsey Health Institute and OECD figures, because those pages did not load or did not contain the numbers.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of employees experience burnout?

It depends on the survey. In SHRM's early 2024 survey of 1,405 U.S. workers, 44% said they felt burned out from their work, 45% felt emotionally drained and 51% felt used up at the end of the workday. Gallup measures daily stress instead, at 40% of employees worldwide in 2025.

Is burnout a medical condition?

No. The WHO's ICD-11 classifies burn-out as an occupational phenomenon, a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It has three dimensions: exhaustion, mental distance or cynicism toward the job, and reduced professional efficacy.

How many working days are lost to work-related stress?

In Great Britain, the Health and Safety Executive estimated 22.1 million working days lost to work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2024/25, an average of 22.9 days per case. Worldwide, the WHO and ILO estimate 12 billion workdays are lost each year to depression and anxiety.

Do managers suffer more stress than other employees?

Gallup's 2025 data says yes: 45% of managers reported daily stress against 39% of individual contributors. In SHRM's 2024 sample, 33% of people managers said their leadership role is not worth the stress.

Does job insecurity affect employee stress?

The APA's spring 2025 survey of 2,017 U.S. employed adults found that 54% said job insecurity significantly affected their work stress, and 44% worried an economic downturn could cost them their job within the year, up from 36% in 2024.