Worth Reading – Most workers told Monster their job harms their mental health

Well, this isn’t good:

• The workplace is wearing on workers’ mental health — with 59% saying their job harms their mental health on a monthly basis and 7 in 10 saying they feel pressure to appear “okay” at work, according to Monster’s 2026 State of Workplace Mental Health Report, released Friday.

• Burnout and stress are now commonplace, with 46% and 59% reporting such feelings on a daily or weekly basis, Monster found. More than one-third of the 1,000 currently employed U.S. workers surveyed also reported anxiety, panic, trouble sleeping and headaches, and 1 in 4 reported symptoms of depression.

• Top workplace contributors to negative mental health included increased workload or understaffing, poor management and difficulty attaining work-life balance. Workers also cited workplace conflict, stagnant pay and fear of layoffs.

https://www.hrdive.com/news/workers-say-job-harms-mental-health/820003/

Are we now in a place where we aren’t going to find work that cares about our mental health and settle for work that at least doesn’t do more damage? I hope not, but it is starting to look that way.

If you look at the contributors to the mental health damage, though, you see things that are avoidable if organizations wanted to avoid them. Fix poor management, address understaffing, pay people what they’re worth, and don’t lay off workers just to tweak the stock price. Unfortunately, in the current political and economic climate, I don’t see enough organizations that want to do any of that. They may regret that as the workforce keeps shrinking and the fight for talent picks up again, and I do believe it will, when people start understanding how badly we’ve been oversold on what AI can do and at what price point.

I think people will remember how you treated them when they had few alternatives. You might wish you’d treated them better.

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