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American workers are feeling more pressure in their lives, with a greater share reporting that they feel like they are struggling than doing well, according to a new Gallup poll.
Gallup released new data for the company on Tuesday Life Evaluation Indexwhich measured how people rate their current and expected future lives since 2008. Respondents are asked to rate their current and future lives on a 10-point scale, which is broken down into ‘thriving’, ‘struggling’ or ‘suffering’.
The company’s survey of U.S. workers, conducted in the fourth quarter of 2025, found that the share of affluent workers fell to 46% from 50% in the same quarter a year ago, while the share of struggling workers rose from 46% to 49% during that period.
“For the first time since Gallup began measuring the life evaluation of the U.S. workforce, more American workers are struggling in their lives (49%) than are thriving (46%),” the polling and analytics firm noted. In addition, 5% of respondents were classified as ‘suffering’.
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The share of workers who are struggling now exceeds the share of workers who are doing well, Gallup found. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)
The shift comes in contrast to the index’s findings in 2022 and 2023, when the share of U.S. workers who said they were “thriving” was somewhere in the high to mid-50s, indicating resilience after the economic turbulence of the 1950s. Covid-19 pandemic.
Over the past decade, relatively high numbers of respondents have been classified as thriving, with Gallup’s statistic holding steady between 57% and 60% between 2009 and 2019.
Respondents classified as flowering briefly fell to 55% in 2020 before recovering in 2021, but the figure has generally fallen steadily since then.
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American workers were less optimistic about their personal prospects. (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The share of respondents who were doing well reached a recent peak in the third quarter of 2022, when it stood at 55%, compared to 41% of respondents who were struggling. That 14 percentage point difference in favor of the boom was the largest difference since 2022.
“The decline in worker prosperity has been gradual but consistent. No quarter since early 2024 has seen sustained improvement — that is, consecutive quarters of rising prosperity,” Gallup wrote.
Employees who struggle rather than thrive also pose challenges for employers, who may face even more challenges absenteeism or turnover of struggling workers.
“The importance to organizations and the economy is real given that employee well-being has a tangible impact on organizations’ bottom lines. Gallup research shows that employees who are not thriving are more likely to miss work due to illness and look for a new job,” the company added.
“Thriving employees miss 53% fewer workdays due to health problems and are 32% less likely to actively look for a new job. As flourishing wanes, organizational performance risks follow,” Gallup explains.
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The share of federal workers rated as thriving fell faster than other groups. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images)
While the report indicated that all major segments of the U.S. workforce have experienced a worsening outlook on their lives since 2022, Gallup noted that federal employees have seen a more severe and rapid decline in their prospects.
Federal workers were more likely than the average American worker to be thriving in 2022, when they averaged 60%. That was six points above the national average and four points higher than state and local government employees.
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By the end of 2025, federal workers’ boom rate fell 12 points to an average of 48%, which was far greater than the decline of average U.S. workers, whose rate fell six points to 48%, and that of state and local government workers, whose combined boom rate fell six points to 50%.
