Employee engagement has dropped globally for two consecutive years, with lower engagement amongst managers contributing to about $10 trillion in lost productivity.
Global employee engagement fell from 21% in 2024 to 20% in 2025, an annual Gallup survey showed. This is the first time global engagement has dropped in consecutive years; no region of the world had increased engagement in the past year.
Gallup’s 2026 edition of State of the Global Workplace found that managers continue to accelerate the downturn. Since 2022, manager engagement has dropped 9 percentage points. The largest year-over-year drop in manager engagement occurred between 2024 and 2025, when it declined by five points from 27% to 22%, the report found.
Decreased engagement amongst managers is stalling innovation, the survey found. Many employees report a lack of active support from their managers around artificial intelligence (AI): “Less than a third of US employees in organisations that have begun implementing AI technologies strongly agree their manager actively supports their team’s use of the technology.”
However, skills and training gaps continue to restrict meaningful collaboration with teams and technology. Few managers, the survey said, have natural management talent, and many have not received the training they need to successfully coach teams and individuals towards high performance.
Regionally, the US and Canada led in employee engagement (31%, unchanged from 2024). Europe continues to have the lowest levels of engagement, declining from 13% in 2024 to 12% in 2025.
Wellbeing has elevated
While workforce engagement levels fell again in 2025, global employee wellbeing rebounded for the first time in three years, but the increase was slight.
Latin America and the Caribbean (56%) and Europe (49%) ranked significantly above the global average of 34%.
A psychological breakdown of workforce roles showed higher levels of engagement and wellbeing across leadership compared with individual contributors but noted that leaders were more likely to report feelings of anger, sadness, loneliness, and stress the previous day.
Job market outlook improves
Perceptions of the global job market were slightly more optimistic in 2025.
However, the improved job market outlook was concentrated among non-remote-capable, fully on-site workers. According to the survey, optimism remained flat among hybrid workers and declined for remote staff. “The drop in optimism among remote-capable workers could be due to possible declines in remote job opportunities caused by changes in employer policies or the automation of knowledge work,” Gallup said.
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