Organizational behavior statistics show a workforce facing a mixed picture: global engagement is 20%, while 34% of employees are thriving and 40% experienced substantial stress the previous day. These measures describe how people experience work, how they relate to leaders and organizations, and how employment patterns are changing.
Contents
- Global employee engagement
- Who is engaged and where
- Thriving, stress, and daily emotions
- What U.S. engagement measures show
- Leadership and federal workplace experience
- Turnover, quits, and separations
- Work-related stress and mental health
Global employee engagement
The Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2026 Global Data Summary reports that 20% of employees globally are engaged. Another 64% are not engaged, and 16% are actively disengaged. Together, these figures indicate that the largest group is neither strongly connected to work nor actively opposed to it, while a smaller but substantial group is actively disengaged.
The long-term series shows that global engagement was 12% in 2009 and reached 22% in 2019. It was 20% in 2020, 21% in 2021, and 23% in both 2022 and 2023. Engagement then fell to 21% in 2024 and 20% in 2025. The 2025 figure therefore sits 8 percentage points above the 2009 level, but 3 points below the 2022 and 2023 high in this series.
These figures are global employee engagement measures for the years identified by Gallup. They are not a direct measure of productivity, performance, or financial results. They are useful organizational behavior indicators because they describe employees’ connection to their work and workplace over time.
Who is engaged and where
Engagement differs across employee groups. Female employees were 21% engaged globally, compared with 19% for male employees. Employees younger than 35 were at 19%, compared with 21% for employees age 35 or older. Managers were at 22%, while individual contributors were at 19%.
Work arrangement also varies in the Gallup data. Exclusively remote workers were 30% engaged globally. Hybrid workers were at 25%, on-site remote-capable workers at 24%, and on-site non-remote-capable workers at 17%.
Regional engagement ranged from 31% in the United States and Canada to 12% in Europe. Latin America and the Caribbean were at 30%, Southeast Asia at 25%, and Post-Soviet Eurasia at 25%. Australia and New Zealand and South Asia were each at 21%, while Sub-Saharan Africa was at 19% and East Asia at 18%. The Middle East and North Africa were at 14%.
| Employee group or region | Engaged employees |
|---|---|
| United States and Canada | 31% |
| Latin America and the Caribbean | 30% |
| Southeast Asia | 25% |
| Europe | 12% |
| Exclusively remote workers | 30% |
| Hybrid workers | 25% |
| On-site non-remote-capable workers | 17% |
These comparisons should be read as descriptive differences, not as proof that one work arrangement or demographic characteristic causes engagement to rise or fall. The measures compare groups across the same global reporting framework.
Thriving, stress, and daily emotions
Gallup’s well-being measures add a second dimension to organizational behavior. Globally, 34% of employees were thriving, 56% were struggling, and 9% were suffering. Global thriving stood at 24% in 2009 and rose to 35% in 2022. It was 34% in 2023, 33% in 2024, and returned to 34% in 2025.
Female employees were 37% thriving globally, compared with 33% of male employees. Managers were at 40%, compared with 32% for individual contributors. Hybrid employees and on-site remote-capable employees were each at 45% thriving. Exclusively remote employees were at 33%, while on-site non-remote-capable employees were at 32%.
Regional thriving was highest in Latin America and the Caribbean at 56%, followed by Australia and New Zealand at 55%, the United States and Canada at 51%, and Europe at 49%. South Asia was at 16% in the reported regional figures.
Daily stress remains widespread. Forty percent of employees globally experienced stress a lot of the previous day. The global rate was 31% in 2009, rose to 44% in 2021 and 44% in 2022, and then eased to 41% in 2023. Female employees reported 43% daily stress, compared with 39% for male employees. Managers reported 45%, compared with 39% for individual contributors.
The United States and Canada had the highest regional stress rate at 50%. Post-Soviet Eurasia had the lowest at 21%. Globally, 22% of employees experienced anger a lot of the previous day, 23% experienced sadness, and 22% experienced loneliness.
What U.S. engagement measures show
The Gallup U.S. employee engagement reports provide more specific workplace indicators. In 2024, 31% of U.S. employees were engaged and 17% were actively disengaged. The decline in U.S. engagement was equivalent to 4.8 million fewer engaged employees.
Several elements of the employee experience were lower in 2024 than in March 2020. In 2024, 46% of U.S. employees clearly knew what was expected of them at work, down from 56% in March 2020. Thirty-nine percent strongly felt that someone at work cared about them as a person, down from 47%. Thirty percent strongly agreed that someone at work encouraged their development, down from 36%.
These measures connect engagement with recognizable organizational behavior conditions: clarity about expectations, interpersonal care, and development support. The figures do not establish that any single condition caused the engagement change, but they identify workplace experiences that moved alongside it in the reported period.
Leadership and federal workplace experience
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s 2024 governmentwide management report recorded a 41% Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey response rate, up from 39% in 2023 and below the 44% reported for 2020. OPM’s governmentwide Employee Engagement Index was 73 in 2024, up from 72 in 2023 and 71 in 2021–2022.
Leadership-related measures also increased. The Leaders Lead score was 63 in 2024, compared with 61 in 2023 and 59 in 2022. The Supervisors score was 81, up from 80 in 2023. Intrinsic Work Experience was 75, up from 74 in 2023. The Global Satisfaction Index was 65, up from 64, while Job Satisfaction was 69, up from 68.
Pay Satisfaction was 59 in 2024, compared with 57 in 2023. Organization Satisfaction was 64, compared with 62, and Recommend Organization was 69, compared with 67. Performance Confidence was 84 and unchanged from 2021 through 2023; the item measuring ability to adapt to changing priorities was 80 in 2024.
Within the federal agency-size comparison, the Employee Engagement Index was 76 for very small agencies, 77 for small agencies, 76 for medium agencies, 74 for large agencies, and 73 for very large agencies. At OPM itself, the 2024 survey response rate was 53.45%, representing 1,489 completed surveys out of 2,786 administered.
Turnover, quits, and separations
Employee movement provides another observable organizational behavior signal. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 5.5 million hires in March 2024, with a hires rate of 3.5%. Total separations were 5.2 million, with a total separations rate of 3.3%. March also recorded 3.3 million quits and 1.5 million layoffs and discharges.
In August 2024, total separations were 5.0 million and the total separations rate was 3.1%. Quits were 3.1 million, with a quits rate of 2.0%. Layoffs and discharges were 1.6 million, with a rate of 1.0%, and other separations totaled 304,000.
| U.S. labor-market measure | March 2024 | August 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Total separations | 5.2 million | 5.0 million |
| Total separations rate | 3.3% | 3.1% |
| Quits | 3.3 million | 3.1 million |
| Layoffs and discharges | 1.5 million | 1.6 million |
In November 2024, the quits rate was 2.1% in private industry and 0.8% in government. The federal government quits rate was 0.5% and had been 0.7% or lower since September 2022. By industry, the November quits rate was 3.5% in leisure and hospitality, 2.6% in other services, 2.4% in trade, transportation, and utilities, and 2.1% in professional and business services.
Work-related stress and mental health
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration reports that 83% of U.S. workers suffer from work-related stress and that 54% say stress affects their home life. OSHA also reports that approximately 65% of U.S. workers characterized work as a significant source of stress in each year from 2019 through 2021.
OSHA says workplace stress has been reported to cause 120,000 deaths in the United States each year. It also states that nearly one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness and that employers see a $4 productivity return for every $1 spent on ordinary mental health concerns.
According to OSHA, workplace stress and poor mental health can affect job performance, productivity, work engagement, communication, physical capability, and daily functioning. Taken together with the Gallup stress and well-being measures, these statistics show why organizational behavior analysis commonly examines both employee outcomes and the conditions surrounding work. The reported figures cover different populations, definitions, and measurement periods, so they should be compared as complementary indicators rather than treated as one unified survey.