Employee engagement just keeps falling, dropping 20 percent worldwide in 2025, according to Gallup's "State of the Global Workplace 2026" report. That's the lowest level since 2020, and it cost the global economy an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity. Lower engagement among managers can be blamed for much of the recent downturn in employee engagement, according to Gallup.

"Engagement measures the psychological attachment workers have to their work, their team, and their employer," the report states. "Gallup meta-analyses over the years have consistently shown a strong relationship between employee engagement and business-unit productivity, including profitability and sales."

This year's report shows the largest year-over-year drop (from 2024 to 2025) in manager engagement since Gallup began tracking it in 2009—declining by 5 percentage points, from 27 percent to 22 percent.

The Gallup World Poll includes responses from more than 263,800 people from more than 160 countries and is part of the analytics company's ongoing study of the global employee experience.

Other findings from the report:

  • Job market perceptions improved by just 1 percentage point between 2024 and 2025, to 52 percent. That's down from a record 55 percent in 2019. The drop was especially evident among full-time remote workers and remote-capable but fully onsite workers. Gallup speculates the reason could be "due to possible declines in remote job opportunities caused by changes in employer policies or the automation of knowledge work."
  • Daily negative emotions among workers—including stress, anger, or sadness—have declined since the pandemic, but they remain elevated. Only 34 percent of the world's workers stated they are thriving (defined as "highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace").
  • Nearly two-thirds (65%) of U.S. workers in organizations that have implemented artificial intelligence said that AI has made a "somewhat" or "extremely" positive impact on their individual productivity, while only 12% strongly agreed that the technology has transformed how work gets done in their organizations.

That third point begs the question that Gallup CEO Jon Clifton asks in the report's introduction: "If the technology isn't the problem, what is?"

"Gallup's data points to an answer the corporate world has largely ignored: the manager," Clifton writes. "In organizations investing in AI, the strongest predictor of employee adoption, aside from technical integration, is whether their direct manager actively champions it. Even the most sophisticated neural network cannot overcome an indifferent team leader."

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