Burnout is not a mood. At WebMD Health Services, we believe that burnout is a prolonged state in which an employee feels emotionally drained, negative about work, unable to make an impact and overwhelmed by workload. The employee burnout statistics in this article draw from credible 2024–2026 research, including Eagle Hill, Spring Health and Headspace. We also present groundbreaking research published by the Center for Research at WebMD Health Services, giving HR and benefits leaders first-party, longitudinal evidence to plan against in 2026.
The state of employee burnout in 2026.
Let’s start with the big picture. The following statistics set the baseline for everything else in this article: how widespread burnout has become, how it shows up as daily stress, how it shapes employee engagement with work and how it drives leaders out the door. Each data point reflects real people and real organizational impact. And each reinforces the same message: proactive investment in well-being is no longer optional. The WebMD Health Services Center for Research has tracked this trend directly, and the direction is concerning.
1. More than half of U.S. workers report experiencing burnout.
Eagle Hill Consulting’s Workforce Burnout Survey 2025, fielded by Ipsos in November 2025 with more than 1,400 U.S. employees, reported that 55% of the U.S. workforce is experiencing burnout. That is most of your workforce. For 2026 planning, treat it as a direct threat to efficiency, innovation, customer service and retention.
2. 40% of employees globally experienced a lot of stress the previous day.
Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report puts the share of employees who experienced significant stress the prior day at 40% globally. Daily stress is a leading indicator HR leaders can actually monitor. Track it, and you will see engagement and retention outcomes shift long before they show up in an exit interview.
3. Only 1 in 10 individual contributors is highly engaged at work.
The WebMD Health Services 2026 Workplace and Employee Survey (n = 3,872) pegs the share of highly engaged individual contributors at only 1 in 10. That is roughly three times lower than senior leaders, and individual contributors are the largest segment of any workforce. This engagement divide travels alongside burnout. Mental well-being and discretionary effort move together.
4. Burned-out leaders are 3.5 times more likely to leave.
DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2025 reports that burned-out leaders are 3.5 times more likely to leave their role to protect their well-being. Leadership turnover is expensive, visible and disruptive. It is also one of the clearest downstream consequences of unaddressed burnout, and it puts succession plans and organizational continuity at risk.
Burnout is rising faster than we realize.
Most burnout headlines are point-in-time snapshots. At the WebMD Health Services Center for Research, we take a different approach: we track burnout longitudinally as a prolonged condition in which an employee feels emotionally drained, negative about work, unable to make an impact and overwhelmed by workload. That framework lets us see whether burnout is a temporary spike or a structural shift.
5. Employee burnout rose 12–43% across every dimension between 2022 and 2026.
The WebMD Health Services 2026 Workplace and Employee Survey (n = 3,872) observed increases of 12–43% from 2022 to 2026 across all four measured dimensions of burnout. Taken together, persistent burnout climbed 23% over that four-year window. That is a structural shift.
6. Burnout is a distinct, prolonged condition, not everyday stress.
The WebMD Health Services Center for Research distinguishes acute burnout from persistent burnout. Acute burnout is short-term, tied to a specific high-stress event, and resolves relatively quickly once the stressor is removed. Persistent burnout is chronic, driven by ongoing pressures like heavy workload, poor work-life balance and lack of support. It requires sustained, systemic intervention, not a one-off perk. This distinction is the foundation for measurement and strategy. It is also why individual coping tools alone rarely move the needle. Organizational action is needed.
Our on-demand webinar, Burnout in Focus: Research-Driven Solutions for Your Organization, unpacks that distinction and the organizational strategies that follow from it.
What is driving employee burnout?
The four dimensions above describe what burnout feels like. This section turns to what causes it. The workplace burnout statistics below show the drivers are broader and more human than workload alone, spanning the conditions, relationships and daily realities that wear employees down over time.
7. Employees blame the work and the people equally.
Eagle Hill Consulting’s Workforce Burnout Survey 2025 attributes burnout 50/50 to the work itself (workload and work type) and the people aspect of work (collaboration, relationships and team dynamics). Cutting workload without addressing culture will only get you halfway there. Team health matters just as much.
8. Long working hours are a top driver of job-related stress.
Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey ranks long working hours among the top drivers of job-related stress for Gen Zs (48%) and millennials (47%) whose jobs significantly contribute to their stress. Workload boundaries, autonomy and manager support are the practical levers here. Overwork is a design choice, not an inevitability.
9. Delegation is the top burnout-prevention skill, and 81% of rising leaders lack it.
DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2025 identified delegation as the single most effective burnout-prevention skill, then showed that 81% of rising leaders are not proficient in it. That is a concrete, trainable gap. It is also one of the clearest entry points for leadership development as a burnout-prevention strategy. It directly connects to the manager burnout data ahead.
10. 1 in 5 employees feel unable to make an impact at work.
Workload is one component of burnout, but it is not the loudest signal in the data. The WebMD Health Services 2026 Workplace and Employee Survey (n = 3,872) shows 20% of employees strongly agreeing that they feel unable to make an impact at work, more than five points higher than any other burnout dimension. This is where care shows up in practice. Manager support, clear communication, goal setting that ties day-to-day work to broader organizational priorities and thoughtful job design all help employees see that their contribution matters. When employees cannot see their impact, they disengage. When they can, the entire burnout equation shifts.
11. In-office employees reported the highest burnout by work arrangement.
The WebMD Health Services Center for Research 2024 Workplace and Employee Survey (n = 3,653) recorded the highest burnout by work arrangement among in-office employees, about 9% higher than hybrid and 3% higher than remote employees. That complicates the assumption that presence equals engagement. It also sits alongside external findings like Eagle Hill’s, which report higher burnout among fully remote workers depending on segment.
Burnout across generations and genders.
Burnout is not evenly distributed. Younger workers and senior women carry a disproportionate load and external research does not always agree on the exact contours. For this reason, well-being strategies should be segmented by population instead of applied uniformly. The four burnout statistics below show where variation matters most.
12. Gen Z is the most burned-out generation at 66%.
Eagle Hill Consulting’s Workforce Burnout Survey 2025 ranks burnout highest among Gen Z (66%), followed by millennials (58%), Gen X (53%) and baby boomers (37%). Tailor support accordingly. WebMD Health Services’ own longitudinal data shows the steepest recent increases among older cohorts, so generational strategy cannot be static.
13. 40% of Gen Zs say they feel stressed or anxious most of the time.
Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey reports that 40% of Gen Zs feel stressed or anxious all or most of the time. Persistent stress in early-career employees is a retention risk. Accessible emotional balance resources and consistent manager check-ins are two of the highest-leverage responses.
14. Gen Z workplace anxiety rose from 54% to 61% in a single year.
The 15th Annual Aflac WorkForces Report 2025–2026 tracked Gen Z workplace anxiety climbing from 54% in 2024 to 61% in 2025. A seven-point jump in one year signals that the youngest workers are trending in the wrong direction and that support cannot wait.
15. 6 in 10 senior women report frequent burnout.
According to McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org’s Women in the Workplace 2025, roughly 6 in 10 senior women experience frequent burnout, compared with about half of men at the same level. This is both an equity issue and a leadership-pipeline risk. Inclusive well-being design and workload equity are the practical starting points.
16. Caregivers are about 20% more likely to experience burnout.
The WebMD Health Services Center for Research 2024 Workplace and Employee Survey (n = 3,653) reports that caregivers are roughly 20% more likely to experience burnout than non-caregivers across all four burnout dimensions. Caregiving is a major outside-of-work stressor, and organizations can respond with flexibility, targeted benefits and dedicated resources. Caregivers should be a priority population.
Manager and leader burnout statistics.
Leaders are not immune. In fact, they are often the most affected, and their burnout does not stay contained. Managers shape the daily employee experience, so their strain becomes their team’s strain. The workplace burnout statistics below show why leadership well-being and skill-building act as force multipliers for prevention across the organization.
17. Middle managers carry the heaviest burnout burden of any role level.
The WebMD Health Services 2026 Workplace and Employee Survey (n = 3,872) shows middle managers registering burnout rates more than three times higher than individual contributors, and even higher than senior leaders. They are the connective tissue: managing upward and downward, driving culture, championing strategy and supporting teams. That responsibility comes at a cost. And it is not matched by a corresponding level of engagement or well-being.
18. 71% of leaders report significantly higher stress since stepping into their role.
DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2025 reports that 71% of leaders feel significantly higher stress since entering their current role. Leadership transitions are high-risk moments for burnout. Proactive support during role changes, such as coaching, peer networks and workload calibration, pays for itself.
How burnout affects performance and retention.
Burnout is an operational issue. The two burnout statistics below convey what happens when it goes unaddressed: talent leaves, performance drops and hidden costs accumulate. For those building the internal case for investment, this is the section to bookmark.
19. Burned-out workers are nearly 3 times more likely to plan to leave.
Eagle Hill Consulting’s Workforce Burnout Survey 2025 shows burned-out workers are nearly three times more likely to plan to leave within the coming year. 71% say burnout hurts their job performance, and 56% say it affects attendance. Performance and attendance are measurable, manager-visible signals. Detecting them early through listening strategies and targeted intervention is the difference between retaining an employee and a resignation letter.
20. HR leaders estimate 30% of employees are experiencing “silent burnout.”
Spring Health’s 2026 Workplace Mental Health Annual Report, based on two surveys of 500+ HR and benefits professionals and 1,500+ full-time employees, fielded January–February 2026, estimates that about 30% of employees are experiencing “silent burnout,” or a slow-building, yet undetected form of exhaustion that gets masked by the appearance that everything is fine. 4 in 10 employees who report experiencing burnout also report feeling checked out when they’re at work. Presenteeism takes a toll on performance and serves as an early warning sign for costly outcomes like extended leave and medical claims. Learning to recognize employee burnout signs earlier is how HR leaders surface this hidden exhaustion before it turns into leave.
The context is worse. 61% of HR leaders say mental health leaves rose in the past year, and 16% saw increases of 25% or more. Burnout incidence sits at 54% among employees who lack adequate support, versus 32% among those who have it.
That 22-point gap lines up with WebMD Health Services’ own findings. Perceived support is the single strongest predictor of trust, well-being and engagement. More than 1 in 3 employees say their organization is not providing adequate support through change. Only 5% of employees who feel completely unsupported report high trust, compared with 96% of those who feel fully supported. Silent burnout is a visible warning that support is not being felt.
Employee burnout by industry.
Burnout does not distribute evenly across sectors. WebMD Health Services’ cross-industry research, Glassdoor’s review-sentiment analysis and nursing-specific data all point to the same conclusion: no industry is exempt, but the shape of the problem varies.
21. Business and Professional Services had the highest burnout of any industry.
The WebMD Health Services Center for Research 2024 Workplace and Employee Survey (n = 3,653) placed Business and Professional Services at the highest burnout score, followed by Education. Burnout increased across every industry measured between 2022 and 2024, with the steepest increase among Education employees. Benchmarking matters because “we’re doing better than industry average” is not the same as “we’re doing well.”
22. Mentions of burnout in employee reviews rose 65% year over year.
Glassdoor’s Q1 2026 Economic Research put burnout mentions in employee reviews up 65% year over year, with workers referencing burnout about 2.5 times more often than before the pandemic. Employee confidence, meanwhile, hit a record low. Nonprofit and healthcare workers mention burnout the most. Media, technology and real estate are where mentions are rising fastest. Glassdoor measures frequency of mentions in reviews, not survey-measured prevalence. Both signals matter.
23. 58% of nurses report feeling burned out most days.
AMN Healthcare’s 2025 Survey of Registered Nurses reports that 58% of nurses feel burned out most days. Frontline clinical burnout directly affects patient-care quality and turnover. For healthcare workforces, confidential, low-barrier well-being resources are especially important because the barriers to seeking support are especially high.
AI and change fatigue are reshaping burnout.
The pace of workplace change has become a burnout driver in its own right, and AI is the accelerant. HR leaders are only beginning to measure this dimension, but the early signal is strong. It fits squarely inside the WebMD Health Services view of burnout as a prolonged, accumulating condition. Resilience-building, recovery norms and structured change support are the direction well-being strategy is heading in 2026.
24. The most productive AI users carry a burnout risk 4.5 times higher than their peers.
The WebMD Health Services Center for Research 2026 Workplace and Employee Survey (n = 3,872) describes AI adoption as near-universal. 80% of employees already use AI at work. Frequency tracks with felt productivity: 94% of daily users feel more productive, versus 10% of those who rarely use it. But here is the paradox. Employees who strongly agree that AI makes them more productive carry a burnout risk 4.5 times higher than those who are neutral or disagree. The people delivering the greatest AI-driven gains are the most vulnerable. Output and risk are rising together, and organizations must protect their highest performers.
25. 51% of workers are emotionally checked out.
Headspace’s 2026 Workforce State of Mind Report reports that 51% of workers are emotionally checked out. AI is accelerating what Headspace calls “change fatigue.” 70% of employees say their organization adopted new AI technologies in the past year, making it the most common form of organizational change. Among workers experiencing change, 55% have sacrificed sleep or recovery to meet performance expectations. Headspace frames this as “chronic strain.”
What employees need to prevent burnout.
The protective factors are as measurable as the risk factors. Belonging, perceived organizational care and engagement are buildable conditions. And they are the leading indicators of whether the support an organization offers is actually being experienced as support. These are the levers HR and benefits leaders can pull directly.
26. Employees who feel their organization cares are 37% less likely to experience burnout.
Organizational care is one way to prevent employee burnout. The WebMD Health Services Center for Research 2025 Workplace and Employee Survey (n = 4,001) reports that employees who strongly feel their organization cares about their well-being are 37% less likely to experience burnout, 56% more engaged and 34% more likely to stay. Perceived organizational care is one of the most actionable burnout-prevention levers available, a triple win across burnout, engagement and retention. The practices that signal care are concrete: psychological safety, manager support, employee input and action on feedback.
27. Employees who feel belonging report far lower burnout.
The 15th Annual Aflac WorkForces Report 2025–2026 reports 55% burnout among employees who feel a sense of belonging, versus 78% among those who do not. That is a 23-point protective gap. Belonging is a cultivable condition tied directly to culture-of-care and manager-support strategies.
28. Only 48% of employees are confident their employer cares about their mental health.
The same Aflac Report also shows confidence in employer care for mental health falling to 48% in 2025, down from 54% in 2024. That decline is a warning. Perceived care shapes whether well-being investment is felt as genuine support or dismissed as a checkbox. If employees do not feel it, the investment does not land.
How WebMD Health Services supports workplace well-being.
The employee burnout statistics in this article point to one conclusion: sustainable impact requires systemic solutions that work at multiple layers at once.
The WebMD Health Services Center for Research’s point of view is straightforward. Individual-level support should focus on vulnerable populations: caregivers, middle managers, early-career employees, senior women and high-frequency AI users. Organization-level strategies must address role clarity, culture of care, belonging and manager support. A holistic listening strategy connects the two, so leaders can measure whether interventions are working.
