Just 22% of workers believe their job is safe from elimination, even as global unemployment sits near historic lows, according to a new ADP Research survey of more than 39,000 workers across 36 countries.
Workers who felt their jobs were safe were six times more likely to be fully engaged, 3.3 times more likely to report high productivity, and twice as likely to say they have no intention of leaving.
Confidence in job security rises sharply with seniority: 18% of individual contributors strongly agreed their job was safe, compared to 35% of C-suite executives.
Workers who use AI daily were four times more likely than non-users to say they felt less productive than they could be, but they were also twice as likely to be fully engaged and far less likely to report negative work stress.
Only 19% of workers reported being fully engaged on the job in 2025, unchanged from the prior year, meaning more than 80% of workers are not giving it their all.
62% of workers put in up to five unpaid hours per week, while 38% work six or more extra hours. Workers logging the most unpaid time were the most engaged but also the most likely to be actively job hunting.
Read more via ADP Research, HR Dive
For the first time since Gallup began tracking workforce life evaluations, more workers say they are struggling (49%) than thriving (46%), according to a new Gallup survey of more than 22,000 U.S. workers.
Job market confidence has collapsed, with just 28% of workers saying now is a good time to find a quality job, down from 70% in mid-2022.
The hiring rate has dropped to 3.2%, its lowest level since March 2013, when unemployment was 7.5%. There are now more unemployed people (7.4 million) than available jobs (6.9 million), a reversal from the post-pandemic years.
College-educated workers are now the most pessimistic about the job market, a sharp reversal from previous years. Just 19% of workers with a college degree think now is a good time to find a job, compared to 35% of workers without one, reflecting a prolonged hiring slowdown in white-collar fields.
Gen Z and Millennial workers are the most likely to be looking: more than 60% of Gen Z workers are either actively job hunting or watching for opportunities, while 74% of baby boomers say they aren't looking at all.
43% of workers say they stay in their current role primarily because leaving would be too difficult or costly, with 69% citing inability to afford losing their pay or benefits. Nearly half of active job seekers describe the search experience as negative, and more than half who applied for jobs in the past month didn't get a single interview.
Federal workers stand out for the severity of their decline, with thriving rates falling 12 percentage points since 2022, including a sharp drop in 2025.
Confidence in the job market has collapsed to a new low."
Read more via Gallup, ABC News
New research published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology found that abusive supervisor behaviors, including ridicule and privacy invasion, can strip employees of their sense of agency to the point where they feel like "tools" or "cogs in a machine" rather than people. The effect, which researchers call "organizational dehumanization," leads to severe burnout and a breakdown in workplace collaboration.
The dehumanization plays out in two ways: internally, employees feel they can't be their authentic selves at work, leading to emotional exhaustion; socially, they disengage from voluntary teamwork because they feel powerless to influence their environment.
Standard fairness initiatives aren't enough to protect against this effect, researchers found. The fix requires a more fundamental shift toward "human-centric management" that actively restores employee agency.
The research was conducted across both China and North America, suggesting the dynamic isn't limited to one workplace culture.
Read more via HR Dive, Portland State University
Only 32% of the federal workforce is satisfied with and engaged in their jobs, according to a new survey of more than 11,000 federal employees by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.
58% of federal workers surveyed said their engagement has gotten worse over the past year.
The drops at individual agencies were stark: engagement scores at the Commerce Department fell from 72.7 to 24.8, at the Justice Department from 61.3 to 20.1, and at the Social Security Administration from 54.2 to 15.2.
Only 7.5% of respondents said political leaders generate high levels of motivation in the workforce. At HHS, just 2.6% said Secretary Kennedy and his team motivated employees.
The share of workers who feel confident they can report a suspected violation of law without retaliation fell from 71.9% in 2024 to 22.5% today.
The White House pushed back on the findings, saying its own internal survey showed no collapse in engagement.
Read more via Politico
72% of U.S. employees suspect RTO mandates are a "stealth layoff" strategy designed to push people out without paying severance, according to a new survey by resume platform Enhancv.
Highlights from the survey of 1,000 full-time workers who have experienced RTO mandates:
46% admit to "coffee badging," swiping into the office just long enough to be seen before leaving to work elsewhere.
36% have applied for new jobs while sitting at their office desk, and another 36% have started a side hustle since their mandate was announced.
32% said they've intentionally reduced their daily output as a form of quiet protest.
Trust scores dropped to 50 out of 100 among strictly monitored employees, with Gen Z workers scoring nearly 20 points lower than baby boomers.
Read more via Benefits Canada
Microshifting – the idea of working in short, focused bursts throughout the day rather than a straight nine-to-five stretch -- is gaining traction as a scheduling approach, particularly among remote and hybrid workers who need flexibility to manage caregiving, health needs, or simply how their brains work best.
Proponents say breaks between work sessions actually boost creativity and productivity, and some managers say giving employees this kind of autonomy leads to better output and happier teams.
The approach works best in roles where performance can be measured by output rather than hours logged, and tends to happen informally even at companies without an official policy for it.
The downsides are real: it can strain team relationships, create resentment among colleagues who don't have the same flexibility, and blur the line between work and personal time in ways that leave some workers feeling like they're never truly off.
For workers with chronic illness or disabilities, the flexibility can be transformative.
Read more via AP
Researchers at Cornell University tested 1,000 office workers on their ability to distinguish genuine business insight from randomly generated corporate nonsense, and the results were not flattering for fans of "growth-hacking" and "blue-sky thinking."
Shall we "double-click" into this?
Workers who rated corporate jargon as insightful scored lower on analytical thinking, fluid intelligence, and practical decision-making, and consistently chose worse solutions when presented with real workplace scenarios.
The researcher behind the study built a "corporate bullshit generator" to produce statements like "we will actualize a renewed level of cradle-to-grave credentialing," then mixed them with real quotes from Fortune 500 executives. A lot of people couldn't tell the difference.
There is one upside: workers susceptible to corporate speak tended to rate their managers as more charismatic and visionary, and reported higher job satisfaction.
The effect wasn't limited to less-educated workers. Participants included people with bachelor's degrees and PhDs in HR, accounting, marketing and finance. "Anybody can fall for bullshit," the researcher said, "when it is kind of packaged up to appeal to our biases."
Read more via The Guardian
