Employee Engagement Statistics (2026)

Thirty-one percent of US employees were engaged in the first half of 2026, and 18% were actively disengaged. Those are Gallup's figures from 43,262 workers surveyed in February and May, and they are the same as 2025 and 2024. Engagement peaked at 36% in 2020 and has not recovered. Globally the picture is worse: 20% engaged in 2025, the lowest since 2020.

Every page that ranks for this question is a vendor blog, and most of them mix the US and global numbers, quote a cost figure that is two reports old, and attribute a 2014 regression result to a 2026 report. This page gives the sample and fielding date next to each figure, keeps US and global apart, and dates every cost estimate. It covers the trend, what disengagement costs, what engagement does to business results, which drivers have slipped, the manager effect, work arrangement and AI, and the generational split.

How many US employees are engaged, and the trend

Gallup's measure sorts employees into three groups: engaged, meaning involved in and enthusiastic about their work; not engaged, meaning psychologically detached and doing the minimum; and actively disengaged, meaning unhappy and working against the organization. In the first half of 2026, per Gallup's July 2026 update from 43,262 US workers surveyed in February and May with a margin of error of 0.7 points, 31% were engaged and 18% actively disengaged. The remaining 51% were not engaged.

Gallup's January 2026 article puts the 2020 to 2025 decline into headcount: each percentage point is about 1.6 million employees, so the US has roughly 8 million fewer engaged workers than it did in 2020 and 3.2 million fewer than in 2023. The 2024 figure was described at the time as a ten-year low; 2025 and 2026 did not set new lows, they matched it.

Two other Gallup numbers belong beside the engagement rate. In February 2026, 18% of employees were extremely satisfied with their employer as a place to work, and 52% were actively looking for a new job or watching for openings. That second figure sits against a BLS quits rate of 1.9% in August 2026, which is low by recent standards. Detachment without departure is the pattern. Our quiet quitting statistics page covers the not-engaged group in detail, and the turnover statistics page covers who actually leaves.

US against the world

Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026, built from 263,810 respondents in more than 140 countries during 2025, found 20% of employees worldwide engaged, 64% not engaged and 16% actively disengaged. Global engagement was 23% in 2022 and 2023, 21% in 2024 and 20% in 2025, the first back-to-back decline in the series. The US and Canada region led at 31%; Europe was lowest at 12%.

One source of confusion is worth clearing up. Gallup's US country page in that report shows 32% engaged, 51% not engaged and 17% actively disengaged. That is a three-year rolling average ending 2025, drawn from the World Poll. The 31% above is the annual figure from Gallup's US panel. They are different measures of the same thing and should not be placed in one trend line.

What disengagement costs, and what those numbers are

Gallup estimates that employees who are not engaged or actively disengaged cost the US about $2 trillion a year in lost productivity, and the world about $10 trillion, or 9% of global GDP. Those are models applied to survey data, not accounting figures, and they move with each report: the global estimate was $8.8 trillion in the 2023 report, $8.9 trillion in 2024 and $10 trillion in the 2026 edition. A page quoting $8.8 trillion is two editions old.

McKinsey's 2023 analysis of 15,366 workers in seven countries, surveyed between November 2022 and January 2023, modeled the cost for a median-size S&P 500 company at $228 million to $355 million a year in lost productivity from disengagement and attrition, and sorted the workforce into archetypes: about 10% quitters, 11% disruptors, 32% mildly disengaged, 38% reliable and committed, and 4% thriving stars. More than half of a typical workforce sat in the three disengaged groups. It is a seven-country study from early 2023, and should be dated as such.

SHRM's first-quarter 2025 Civility Index, from 1,587 US workers surveyed in January 2025, modeled a narrower cost: about $2.13 billion a day in lost productivity and absenteeism from workplace incivility, at 36 minutes lost per uncivil act. Thirty-eight percent of workers said they would take a pay cut to eliminate incivility from their workplace.

What engagement does to business results

The evidence that engagement predicts performance is Gallup's Q12 meta-analysis, now in its eleventh edition (2024), covering 183,806 business units, 3.35 million employees, 347 organizations and 90 countries. Comparing top-quartile and bottom-quartile business units on engagement, the median differences were:

At the individual level, Gallup's indicator page reports that engaged employees are 69% less likely to experience burnout, 47% less likely to be job hunting and 69% more likely to be thriving in life than those who are not engaged. The one peer-reviewed field study usually quoted alongside these, the BT call-center study by Bellet, De Neve and Ward in Management Science (2023), found about 12% more sales per one-point rise in weekly happiness across 1,793 UK workers over six months. It is often confused with a separate 2015 University of Warwick lab experiment that also produced a 12% figure. Neither is US data.

The drivers that have slipped since 2020

Gallup measures engagement through twelve items, and the ones that moved most explain the decline better than the headline. The share of US employees who strongly agree with each, as of May 2026 on Gallup's indicator page, with the 2020 comparison where Gallup has published it:

• I know what is expected of me at work: 49%, up from 46% in 2024 but down from 56% in March 2020 and a 61% peak in 2015.
• Someone at work cares about me as a person: 40%, down from 47% in 2020.
• Someone encourages my development: 31%, down from 36% in 2020.
• I have the materials and equipment to do my work: 37%.
• I do what I do best every day: 34%.
• I have opportunities to learn and grow: 32%.
• I am connected to the mission or purpose: 31%.
• I received recognition in the last seven days: 29%.
• My opinions count: 27%.
• I have a best friend at work: 22%.

Clarity of expectations is the item Gallup treats as foundational, and it is the one with the longest fall. Asked in open-ended form what is missing, employees in Gallup's 2026 strategy paper most often named an isolated or impersonal culture (32%, rising to 44% of Gen Z and 41% of remote workers), a lack of clear and honest communication from leaders (29%), under-investment in people, pay, tools and staffing (25%), and a lack of feedback, recognition and development (14%). Our page on employee recognition statistics covers the recognition item on its own.

The manager effect

The most quoted sentence in this field is that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. It is Gallup's estimate from a regression across 11,781 work teams, first published in March 2014, and the wording is "at least 70%." Several ranking pages attribute it to the 2026 global report. It is twelve years old and still the best available estimate, which is a reason to cite it with its date rather than without one.

What is new is that managers themselves are disengaging faster than anyone. Globally, manager engagement fell from 31% in 2022 to 30% in 2023, 27% in 2024 and 22% in 2025, the steepest drop of any group, with the 2024 decline concentrated among managers under 35 and women managers. Individual contributors stayed flat at 18% to 19%. Managers also report more daily stress than the people they manage, 45% against 39%. US manager engagement is higher, at 36% in 2025, but the US figure of 35% that still circulates comes from Gallup's 2015 State of the American Manager and should be retired.

Gallup's prescriptions have numbers attached. Only 21% of US employees strongly agree they received meaningful feedback from their manager in the past week, and those who do are four times as likely to be engaged. Teams whose managers were trained in coaching show up to 18% higher engagement. Only 44% of managers worldwide have ever received management training.

Remote, hybrid, on-site and AI

Gallup has not published a US-only engagement split by work location for 2025, so the global figures are what exist. In the 2026 global report, 30% of exclusively remote employees were engaged, against 25% of hybrid workers, 24% of on-site workers in remote-capable jobs, and 17% of on-site workers in jobs that cannot be done remotely. Remote and hybrid workers also reported more daily loneliness, 24% against 18% to 21% for on-site groups. Our return to office statistics page covers the engagement effect of mandates.

AI is the newest variable Gallup tracks, and the July 2026 data on 21,724 employees at organizations adopting AI show an 18-point gap: 48% engaged where the manager actively supports AI use, 30% where the manager does not. Employees at AI-adopting organizations were 6 points more engaged overall, weekly users 8 points more, and where frequent use, a clear integration plan and manager support coincided, engagement reached 53%. The caveat is that only 25% of US employees say their organization has communicated a clear AI plan, and 44% of non-users do not believe AI can help their work. Our AI in the workplace statistics page has the adoption figures.

Generations and satisfaction

Between 2020 and 2025, engagement fell 8 points among Gen Z and younger millennials, 9 points among older millennials born 1980 to 1988, 6 points among Gen X, and not at all among baby boomers. Among the youngest group, the share who strongly agree someone at work cares about them fell from 54% to 41%, and the share who see opportunities to learn and grow fell from 48% to 37%. Qualtrics' 2026 trends report, using a different favourability index across 33,831 employees in 24 countries, puts 18 to 24 year olds above older workers, which says more about the instruments than the generation. Our Gen Z in the workplace statistics page goes further into that.

Job satisfaction is a separate measure and runs higher than engagement. Pew's December 2024 survey of 5,273 employed adults found 50% extremely or very satisfied with their job overall, 38% somewhat satisfied and 12% not satisfied. Satisfaction with pay was 30%, down from 34% a year earlier, and with promotion opportunities 26%, down from 33%. By age, 67% of workers 65 and over were highly satisfied against 43% of those under 30. Our job satisfaction statistics page has the full breakdown.

Reading these figures carefully

Three habits keep these numbers honest. Say whether a figure is US or global, because the US rate is half again the world rate and vendor pages swap them freely. Date every cost estimate, because Gallup's global number has moved by $1.2 trillion across three reports without the underlying method changing much. And do not compare engagement rates across instruments: Achievers reports 26% engaged, Perceptyx 79.5% and Qualtrics around 70%, and none of them measures what Gallup measures. The one series that has been stable in definition and sample for a decade is Gallup's, which is why this page leans on it.

Key takeaways

• 31% of US employees were engaged and 18% actively disengaged in the first half of 2026, unchanged from 2024 and 2025 and down from a 36% peak in 2020.
• Globally, 20% of employees were engaged in 2025, the lowest since 2020 and the first back-to-back decline. The US and Canada lead all regions at 31%.
• Gallup estimates lost productivity from disengagement at about $2 trillion a year in the US and $10 trillion globally. Both are models, and the global figure has changed in every report.
• Top-quartile business units on engagement show 23% higher profitability, 78% lower absenteeism and 51% lower turnover than bottom-quartile units across 183,806 units.
• Clarity of expectations has fallen from 61% in 2015 to 49% in 2026. Feeling cared about fell from 47% to 40% since 2020.
• The 70% manager-variance figure is a 2014 Gallup estimate from 11,781 teams. Global manager engagement fell from 31% to 22% between 2022 and 2025.
• Manager support for AI is associated with an 18-point engagement gap, 48% against 30%, but only 25% of US employees say their employer has a clear AI plan.
• Engagement fell 8 to 9 points among millennials and Gen Z since 2020 and not at all among boomers.