The last few years have been a wild ride for corporate America, as executives try to manage an AI revolution, a burned-out workforce, and the battle over DEI. No job is guaranteed, but it seems that people at the top of the corporate ladder are feeling particularly uneasy.
Around 43% of CEOs report anxiety about losing their jobs because of disruptions, according to a new report from AlixPartners, a global consulting firm, based on data from 3,200 executives across 10 industries and 11 countries. Other members of the C-suite are significantly less stressed, with 25% reporting they fear for their jobs, and around 23% of mid-level executives feeling anxious about their job security.
“We sometimes talk about [executive levels] like the floors of a skyscraper. The higher you go in the organization, the more you feel the wind is buffeting you,” David Garfield, co-CEO of AlixPartners, tells Fortune.
Even though job anxiety is pervasive among corporate leadership, all three groups of executives reported lower levels of anxiety about losing their jobs this year compared with last year. CEO anxiety fell 16 percentage points between 2024 and 2025, followed by a five percentage point drop for C-suite leaders, and a six percentage point drop for mid-level executives.
The data reveals an interesting paradox about the state of leadership today: While disruptions have increased, so has confidence in leadership’s ability to weather the storm. “Organizations are doing a pretty good job of adapting to continuous disruptions,” Garfield says.
Overall, men at all levels of the workforce were slightly more anxious last year than women, although that gap seems to be closing. In 2024, 32% of men reported feeling worried about business disruption costing them their jobs, compared to 28% of women. In 2025, 25% of men felt that their jobs were in danger, compared to 24% of women.
It’s hard to predict what the future holds for C-suite anxiety. Garfield says that he expects an increase in stress levels, but stops short of predicting a surge.
“What we expect the data to show is that anxiety levels have risen somewhat, because the numbers and rates of disruptions have increased. That’s a global phenomenon,” says Garfield. “But we also expect that some of the data is going to be quite durable in terms of the things that people identify as both the challenges and the opportunities for business.”
