U.S. employees are more likely to say they are struggling in their lives rather than thriving, and confidence in the job market — especially among college-educated workers and young people — has fallen to new lows, according to a recent Gallup report.
Nearly half of U.S. workers (49%) reported in 2025 that they were struggling in their lives, compared with 46% who said they were thriving. Five percent said they were suffering. Gallup noted that the findings contrast sharply with readings taken in 2022 and 2023, when over half of employees said they were thriving.
“The slide in workers’ thriving rate has been gradual but consistent,” Gallup reported, noting that no quarterly readings have shown back-to-back increases in employees’ thriving rate.
Though most U.S. employees reported less thriving in 2025, the thriving rate of federal government employees fell much more sharply than it did in other sectors — a change that once again contrasted with ratings recorded in 2022. At that time, federal workers had an average thriving rate of 60%; however, the rate fell to an average of 48% in 2025, which Gallup said constituted a shift “far outpacing the drops in state and local government workers’ combined thriving rate” as well as that of the average American employee. The steepest drop in federal employees’ thriving rates occurred in 2025, Gallup found.
According to the report, U.S. workers were generally pessimistic about the job market, with 72% saying it was a bad time to find a quality job and just 28% considering it a good time. In 2022, 70% of workers were optimistic, and 30% were pessimistic.
“The 42-point decline since then represents the largest collapse in job market confidence Gallup has recorded in the past four years,” Gallup reported.
In another trend reversal, workers with college educations were less optimistic about finding a quality job than those who did not hold a college degree. Gallup reported that until 2024, college-educated workers were slightly more likely to say it was a good time to find a job, but by late 2025, only 19% of that group still held that opinion. By contrast, 35% of those without college degrees had confidence in the job market.
Younger workers were more likely than older adults to be pessimistic about finding a good job, and younger workers were also more likely to be actively searching for a new job or watching for opportunities. Overall, 11% of all U.S. employees said they were looking for a new job, and 40% said they were watching for new opportunities.
Most employees who said they were dissatisfied with their jobs and hoped to change positions cited their current pay or benefits as the reason. Many also said they were looking for more opportunities to grow and advance, and about three in 10 said they want to leave their current job due to poor leadership or management.
However, 30% of employees reported feeling “stuck” in their current job, and 43% said they wouldn’t leave because it would be too difficult or expensive. The majority (69%) of those who said they wouldn't leave because of the cost said they couldn’t afford to lose their current pay or benefits. Fifty-one percent said they would struggle to find a comparable job, and 36% said they are tied to their current schedule or flexibility arrangements.
Gallup also found that job-searching has proven difficult. Forty-nine percent of those seeking a new position say they have had a very or somewhat negative job searching experience, and more than half of those who applied for at least one job in the past 30 days said they had not received any interviews.
Gallup highlighted concerns about employees’ satisfaction and struggling rates, saying that low thriving rates are tied to increased illness — and therefore days off work — and high turnover rates, creating performance risks and a disengaged workforce.
“What makes this moment distinct is not just the scale of discontent, but the conditions that surround it,” Gallup reported. “Workers who want to leave largely cannot — constrained by economics, a cooling labor market and the difficulty of finding anything comparable to what they have. The result is a workforce that is restless but largely immobile, with job watching increasingly concentrated among younger workers who are still in the early stages of their careers.”