Inside Employees’ Minds 2026: A workforce under pressure 

The 2026 Inside Employees’ Minds report finds the U.S. workforce under growing pressures but doubling down at their current employer. Across industries, employees are investing where they are — strengthening commitment and looking inward for growth — while hoping for firmer assurances from employers on pay, skills, flexibility, and how work will change with AI. That search for greater stability frames the findings in this year’s report.

The story this year is about a workforce under increasing pressures. And about a workforce that is meeting that pressure not with retreat, but re-commitment. Even as markets stay unsettled and trade tensions persist, employees tell us they want to stay but they also want to understand what staying will look like. They are leaning in at their current organizations while asking for plain answers about compensation, how work will change with AI, and the pathways that connect today’s roles to tomorrow’s opportunities.

What’s Pressuring Employees Now

Pressures today stem from familiar forces — an unsettled economy, technology moving faster than operating models, and lean staffing on the ground — pushing job security and role clarity to the center of the employee experience.

• Economic uncertainty remains the backdrop. Markets have not settled, and concerns about trade persist. Employees report that inflation and volatility continue to elevate financial stress, and many worry about the wider economic outlook. Job security has seen the sharpest increase in concern among all the issues we track, underscoring how closely people are watching demand and staffing signals. At the same time, sentiment inside organizations is more resilient than sentiment about the economy overall, which reinforces a point we heard repeatedly: internal communication and near-term credibility shape how people feel at work more than headlines do.
  
  
• Technology leads the uncertainty narrative. AI sits at the center of both optimism and concern. Many employees see real potential for efficiency; many also expect AI to impact job security and to make work feel harder in the near term as new tools are introduced. Adoption is uneven across functions and teams, which is why employees look for specifics — where responsibilities will shift, when changes will happen, and how workloads will be managed during transition.
  
  
• Pressures are not evenly distributed. Strain concentrates where work is already demanding. Healthcare and Retail continue to score below the overall average, reflecting lean staffing, coverage challenges, and persistent skills gaps. Hourly and lower-income roles face tighter day-to-day constraints; women and experienced professionals cite predictability in schedules, workloads, and progression and perceived fairness as watchpoints; and late-career employees (55–64) are more cautious about the road ahead. For those earning less than $30,000 a year, mental and emotional health rises to the second-highest concern, highlighting how financial strain and well-being are intertwined at lower income levels. In contrast, High Tech and Financial Services, on-site workers, managers, and employees with five to ten years of tenure show some of the strongest year-over-year gains. Improvement and strain can — and do — coexist across the workforce.

Faced with this mix of stressors, employees are choosing stability: they’re investing in the roles they hold and asking for the clarity that makes staying a smart decision.

• Recommitment to the job. In uncertain markets, many people dig in. Engagement is strong and intent to stay is high and increasing from the past few years, and many say they can meet their career goals inside their current organization — especially where internal mobility is visible. The signal is pragmatic: when the path is clear, staying feels like progress.
  
  
• Assurances that build trust: pay clarity. Transparency has become part of the employee deal. Candidates increasingly expect to see posted ranges in job descriptions and pay sharing among colleagues has become more common — especially among younger workers. Posting is only the start; understanding how pay is determined and how it progresses is what helps employees decide to commit.
  
  
• Assurances that enable growth: AI plans and skills pathways. The call for clarity extends to the future of work. Employees accept that AI is reshaping roles; what they want to see is the plan — role impacts by function, timing, and the safeguards that protect workloads as change rolls out. Confidence about which skills matter has decreased since last year, so role‑to‑skill maps and realistic learning pathways are central to how employees evaluate whether to stay and grow.
  
  
• Flexibility and time off people can count on. Preference and policy still meet in the middle. Where remote work is possible, most employees prefer hybrid routines and very few would choose full-time onsite. Across roles, dependable time off and schedule stability remain tightly linked to well-being; on the frontline, the day-to-day mechanics of coverage, along with leadership support, determine whether paid time off can actually be used.  What employees look for is not a single policy direction but clear criteria and consistent application, so they know what to expect and why.

Following multiple years of mounting strain, we are seeing some modest relief for some portions of the workforce, but no overall let-up. Instead, pressures have been redistributed. Even as pressures around covering monthly expenses are easing in relation to prior periods, it is still the most important concern for employees.

For most, inflation and market volatility continue to produce financial stress, and tariff concerns are widespread. For nearly 1 in 5 US workers, healthcare costs are limiting the ability to get needed care — an even bigger problem for workers in low-wage industries. 41% of workers say that climate change has increased their cost of living, while 21% have incurred significant expense to repair/replace a home or vehicle.

That said, employees are drawing a distinction between the broader economy and their employer: they tend to feel more optimistic and confident about their organization’s prospects than about the national outlook, which makes near‑term signals from leadership — demand, staffing, priorities — especially influential. This is possibly a sign they may be looking to their employers as a stabilizing force.

A layer of episodic costs contributes to financial stress, particularly for lower‑wage workers: health‑care affordability and climate‑related repairs don’t show up every month, but when they do, they are significant. Taken together, these dynamics explain why employees are choosing to stay while asking for clearer pay, clearer plans, and clearer paths.