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Burnout is so rampant among U.S. workers that they’re taking their grievances online at a record rate.
The number of employee Glassdoor reviews mentioning the word “burnout” has reached a new high since the company began reporting the figures back in 2016, according to a study from the employment platform. Work exhaustion began surging during the pandemic, and has only continued to climb—Glassdoor posts citing burnout increased 44% between 2019 and 2024. After a slight dip in 2023 and the beginning of this year, mentions of burnout are up 3% year over year, according to the report.
“Everyone is burned out, no real solutions from mgmt,” reads the title of one workplace review included in the report. The anonymous employee goes on to say that “everyone is burned out” and “everyone overworks, more than before, because of the pressures from the new CEO.”
This latest increase in burnout mentions may be due to the vicissitudes of the labor market, according to the report. During staffing shortages in 2021 to 2022, many employees took on more than their fair share of responsibilities. Those workloads stabilized in 2023 and 2024, but now hiring is cooling, and several companies have had layoffs. That means that staffers are overextended without the hope of new workers coming on to help shoulder the burden.
Burnout can lead to heightened workplace tensions and quitting, but it can also lead to a more banal problem: workers who have less confidence in their companies. In 2024, only 34% of Glassdoor users who mentioned burnout reported having a positive business outlook for their employer, compared to 54% of employees who did not mention burnout, according to the report.
Until employers refocus their efforts on easing the burden of their workers who are already stretched thin, burnout may continue to soar. And employee confidence in executives will likely continue to take a hit.
“Burnout is not just a function of how much business an employer gets. Employees also view it as a result of leaders’ decisions on resource allocation, and high burnout reviews report lower business outlook as employees lose faith in leadership decision making,” the report reads.
Emma Burleigh
emma.burleigh@fortune.com
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Watercooler
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