US Workplace Stress at All Time High, Survey Says

Stress at work has reached epidemic proportions and shows little decline in 2023, according to the American Psychological Association’s “Work in America Survey: Workplaces as Engines of Psychological Health & Wellbeing.”

The national survey found that 77% of U.S. workers reported stress at work in the past month, with 57% reporting negative health effects as a result.

As of December 2023, 3,577 workers completed the online Healthy Work Survey (HWS), based on the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health Quality of Work Life survey.

Employees and workplaces assessed work stress levels as well as important health indicators.

Researchers found the results were consistent with national trends of high levels of stress and burnout.

Eighty-six percent of respondents reported stressful work (often/very often), and 88% reported often/very often “feeling used up at the end of the day”, an indicator of exhaustion and a key component of burnout, researchers said.

The percentage of workers who reported high-risk work stressors also reported the following:

• High workloads/job demands – 80%
• Low job control/resources – 60%
• Low supervisor support – 55%
• High work-family conflict – 55%
• Low rewards (lack of promotions, fair earnings, respect and job security) – 50%

A higher percent of survey respondents (compared to U.S. national population data) reported personally experiencing (38 percent) or witnessing workplace bullying (43%).

Sixteen percent reported experiencing age or gender discrimination, and 9% experienced discrimination due to their race/ethnicity, the research found.

“A large percentage of workers completing the Healthy Work Survey were considered at “high risk” for these common sources of work-related stress,” said Dr. Marnie Dobson, director of the Healthy Work Campaign. “Organizations conducting the survey in 2023 definitely showed concern about employee mental health and well-being, burnout, understaffing, and high workloads and wanted to make improvements.”

The Healthy Work Survey launched in 2021 as a project of the nonprofit research foundation, the Center for Social Epidemiology’s Healthy Work Campaign.

“It is free, online, and uses scientifically-valid measures of work stressors known to cause mental health disorders, and chronic disease including hypertension and heart disease,” says Dr. Peter Schnall, director and Founder of the Center.

Eighteen different occupations are represented in the survey, with the largest percentage of workers sampled from occupations related to: management, business and financial operations, sales, healthcare support, office and administrative support.

Workers surveyed were also sampled from educational occupations, food preparation and service, production, transportation, and healthcare practitioners.

Sixty-four percent of respondents were women, and 75% were white, 7% black, 7% Hispanic/Latino and 3% Asian/Asian-american.

“In 2024, we will be working towards providing a Spanish-language version of the survey, and making the survey more broadly accessible to vulnerable, low-income and immigrant workers who are at higher risk for stress at work,” says Dr. Dobson.

The Healthy Work Campaign urges everyone, especially occupational health & safety specialists, human resources managers, worker advocates and labor representative. Since preventing workers from developing poor mental health is a major public health priority, so should reducing stress and implementing healthy work.

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