A word of warning to bosses: American workers are returning to offices after the summer break less happy than they’ve been in a long time.
U.S. employee engagement, a measure of involvement in the workplace and enthusiasm about work, has dropped since 2021, coinciding with the rise in job resignations. The number of workers who say they are actively disengaged from their jobs—defined as workers who are unhappy about their work and resentful their needs aren’t being met—is rising, according to new research by Gallup, which has tracked workers’ investment in their jobs since 2000.
Nearly one-third of workers described themselves as engaged, or enthused about work, while just under 20% described themselves as actively disengaged, according to Gallup’s June survey of 15,091 U.S. workers. The rest are “not engaged”—people who do the minimum required and are psychologically detached from their jobs. The results are an about-face from the summer of 2020 when U.S. worker engagement levels calculated by Gallup hit their highest level ever, at 40%. People under 35 reported the sharpest drop in engagement.
The data may help explain “quiet quitting,”where employees coast at work and draw a paycheck. Gallup said quiet quitters now make up half the U.S. workforce.
“What we’re seeing right now is kind of a deterioration of the employee-employer relationship,” said Jim Harter, chief scientist for Gallup’s workplace management practice. Some of the estrangement may have been exacerbated by two years many workers spent out of the office in remote and hybrid work arrangements.
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This article was written by Ray A. Smith for The Wall Street Journal.
