Survey: Burnout on the Rise Among Americans Still Working

At least 30 million Americans have lost their jobs in the COVID-19 pandemic, and the remaining American workforce feels more burnt out by the day, according to a national survey released Monday.

The survey, conducted by the professional network Blind, found the number of Americans feeling burned out jumped from 61% in February—before COVID-19 became a global pandemic—to 73% as of May 4.

The survey polled almost 7,000 professionals nationwide from April 30 to May 4. The top three reasons professionals feeling the strain were: no separation between work and life (27%), unmanageable workloads (21%) and job security concerns (19%).

The burnout rate during the COVID-19 pandemic was highest among professionals working for big tech companies with gig economy employees faring the worst. More than 8 in 10 employees at Lyft (88%), Uber (82% and Airbnb (81%) said they were burned out. More than 7 in 10 professionals working at Oracle, Cisco, Salesforce, Apple, PayPal and Expedia Group felt the same. Bloomberg had the smallest percentage of burned-out employees at about 45%.

Among job functions, marketing and communications professionals fared the worst, with 83% reporting they were burned out, followed by finance and accounting professionals (82%), business strategists (79%) and sales professionals (78%).

The survey comes as 43 states are set to reopen in part by the week’s end under a hodgepodge of state and local guidelines. At the federal level, the Trump administration issued guidance to federal agencies in April directing agency officials to work with state and local leaders regarding when and how to open federal facilities.