Roughly 40% of employees worldwide said they experienced a lot of stress during the previous day, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report, a figure that has remained above pre-pandemic levels for several years. Daily anger stood at 22% globally, sadness at 23%, and loneliness at 22%. Together, these numbers point to a workforce that has not returned to the emotional baseline it held before 2020.
Engagement at a five-year low
The emotional picture sits against a backdrop of declining engagement. In 2025, the share of employees described as engaged at work fell to 20%, down from a peak of 23% in 2022 and the lowest reading since 2020. It was the second consecutive year of decline, and no world region recorded an increase.
Researchers estimate that low engagement cost the global economy approximately $10 trillion in lost productivity in the past year, equal to roughly 9% of global GDP.
Engagement, as Gallup defines it, measures the psychological attachment employees feel toward their work, their team, and their employer. Workers who are not engaged or are actively disengaged tend to contribute to less profitable organizations, which in turn reduces broader economic output.
Managers are bearing the brunt
The steepest erosion in engagement has occurred among managers rather than rank-and-file workers. Since 2022, manager engagement has dropped nine points. The sharpest single-year decline came between 2024 and 2025, when manager engagement fell five points, from 27% to 22%. Individual contributor engagement also declined over the same period, though it showed a slight rebound more recently.
Managers used to record an “engagement premium” over those they lead. That gap has now largely closed. In South Asia, primarily India, manager engagement fell by eight points in a single year, the largest regional decline. At the same time, the proportion of managers in South Asia fell as well, suggesting that employers were cutting management layers. Research on U.S. managers found that engagement tends to drop as team sizes grow, pointing to a structural pressure that may apply more broadly.
The data carry a practical implication for organizations adopting artificial intelligence. Researchers found that the strongest predictor of frequent AI use within organizations, beyond technical integration, is whether a direct manager actively champions its adoption. Among employees whose manager strongly supports their team’s use of AI, they are 8.7 times as likely to strongly agree that AI has transformed how work gets done in their organization. Less than a third of U.S. employees in AI-implementing organizations said their manager actively provides that support.
Leaders carry more emotional weight
Leaders report substantially more stress, anger, sadness, and loneliness on a daily basis than individual contributors, and they are less likely to report smiling or laughing a lot. Higher status at work does not appear to translate into better days.
The report connects this finding to a broader dynamic. Leadership can provide a greater sense of voice, agency, and status. It can also mean greater social distance and responsibility for decisions that affect many people’s lives.
Gallup did identify a potential buffer. Among engaged managers and leaders, negative emotions were reported at lower rates than among individual contributors. Engaged leaders were also 14 points more likely to be thriving in their overall life than the average leader. The implication is that engagement and emotional wellbeing move together: organizations that improve one are likely to affect the other.
Women and younger workers report higher stress
Among all employees globally, women reported stress at a higher rate (43%) than men (39%). Workers under 35 reported stress at 42%, compared with 40% for those 35 and older. Managers, at 45%, reported stress at a higher rate than individual contributors, at 39%.
Work location also tracks with stress levels. Hybrid and on-site remote-capable workers both reported stress at 46%, compared with 41% for exclusively remote workers and 39% for those in fully on-site roles where remote work is not an option.
Wellbeing ticked up, but workers still feel worse than before the pandemic
The share of global employees classified as thriving rose one point in 2025, from 33% to 34%, the first increase in three years. Latin America and the Caribbean and Europe each recorded a two-point gain.
Daily stress, anger, and sadness all remain above their pre-pandemic levels. Whether this reflects lasting psychological effects from the pandemic years or a new, more demanding baseline is an open question. Wellbeing tended to be higher among employees who said they enjoyed their work, believed it improved others’ lives, and felt they had meaningful choices in what they did.
The United States and Canada lead in reported stress
Regionally, the United States and Canada recorded the highest daily stress rate among all world regions, at 50%, unchanged from the previous year. Australia and New Zealand came second at 49%, followed by the Middle East and North Africa at 48%. Post-Soviet Eurasia reported the lowest stress rate, at 21%, with Southeast Asia at 25% and South Asia at 30%.
The stress data for the U.S. and Canada come alongside a notable drop in job market confidence for the region. The share of employees in the United States and Canada who said it was a good time to find a job fell to 47%, a decline of 23 percentage points since 2019, making it the second-lowest region in the world on that measure.
