Why Is Everyone So Unhappy at Work Right Now?
Kanebridge News
    HOUSE MEDIAN ASKING PRICES AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $1,736,779 (+1.11%)       Melbourne $1,057,340 (+0.67%)       Brisbane $1,151,226 (+0.91%)       Adelaide $1,015,559 (-0.31%)       Perth $1,005,131 (+1.51%)       Hobart $796,466 (+0.04%)       Darwin $882,186 (+3.28%)       Canberra $964,108 (-3.09%)       National $1,143,418 (+0.66%)                UNIT MEDIAN ASKING PRICES AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $795,054 (-0.05%)       Melbourne $519,602 (-0.44%)       Brisbane $725,709 (+0.28%)       Adelaide $576,859 (+0.27%)       Perth $556,364 (-0.30%)       Hobart $539,090 (+1.17%)       Darwin $431,601 (-3.46%)       Canberra $496,653 (+1.87%)       National $602,168 (+0.09%)                HOUSES FOR SALE AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 12,039 (+174)       Melbourne 12,993 (-35)       Brisbane 7,289 (-39)       Adelaide 2,335 (-40)       Perth 5,251 (-17)       Hobart 827 (+11)       Darwin 144 (+1)       Canberra 937 (+12)       National 41,815 (+67)                UNITS FOR SALE AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 9,101 (+9)       Melbourne 6,848 (-50)       Brisbane 1,320 (-17)       Adelaide 358 (+2)       Perth 1,221 (-32)       Hobart 171 (+4)       Darwin 244 (+4)       Canberra 1,120 (+13)       National 20,383 (-67)                HOUSE MEDIAN ASKING RENTS AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $800 ($0)       Melbourne $580 ($0)       Brisbane $670 ($0)       Adelaide $630 (-$10)       Perth $700 ($0)       Hobart $600 (+$8)       Darwin $750 ($0)       Canberra $690 (-$10)       National $685 (-$2)                UNIT MEDIAN ASKING RENTS AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $750 (-$10)       Melbourne $599 (-$1)       Brisbane $650 ($0)       Adelaide $535 (+$8)       Perth $650 (-$25)       Hobart $460 (-$5)       Darwin $595 (-$5)       Canberra $570 ($0)       National $612 (-$6)                HOUSES FOR RENT AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 5,374 (-74)       Melbourne 7,632 (-176)       Brisbane 3,997 (+12)       Adelaide 1,498 (-8)       Perth 2,385 (-46)       Hobart 156 (-18)       Darwin 100 (+7)       Canberra 417 (-34)       National 21,559 (-337)                UNITS FOR RENT AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 7,991 (-97)       Melbourne 5,949 (-41)       Brisbane 1,977 (-78)       Adelaide 411 (-13)       Perth 729 (-25)       Hobart 70 (-7)       Darwin 149 (+12)       Canberra 680 (-44)       National 17,956 (-293)                HOUSE ANNUAL GROSS YIELDS AND TREND         Sydney 2.40% (↓)       Melbourne 2.85% (↓)       Brisbane 3.03% (↓)       Adelaide 3.23% (↓)       Perth 3.62% (↓)     Hobart 3.92% (↑)        Darwin 4.42% (↓)     Canberra 3.72% (↑)        National 3.11% (↓)            UNIT ANNUAL GROSS YIELDS AND TREND         Sydney 4.91% (↓)     Melbourne 5.99% (↑)        Brisbane 4.66% (↓)     Adelaide 4.82% (↑)        Perth 6.08% (↓)       Hobart 4.44% (↓)     Darwin 7.17% (↑)        Canberra 5.97% (↓)       National 5.28% (↓)            HOUSE RENTAL VACANCY RATES AND TREND       Sydney 2.0% (↑)      Melbourne 1.9% (↑)      Brisbane 1.4% (↑)      Adelaide 1.3% (↑)      Perth 1.2% (↑)      Hobart 1.0% (↑)      Darwin 1.6% (↑)      Canberra 2.7% (↑)      National 1.7% (↑)             UNIT RENTAL VACANCY RATES AND TREND       Sydney 2.4% (↑)      Melbourne 3.8% (↑)      Brisbane 2.0% (↑)      Adelaide 1.1% (↑)      Perth 0.9% (↑)      Hobart 1.4% (↑)      Darwin 2.8% (↑)      Canberra 2.9% (↑)      National 2.2% (↑)             AVERAGE DAYS TO SELL HOUSES AND TREND       Sydney 26.8 (↑)        Melbourne 27.0 (↓)       Brisbane 29.6 (↓)       Adelaide 24.7 (↓)       Perth 34.3 (↓)       Hobart 27.7 (↓)       Darwin 25.7 (↓)       Canberra 26.9 (↓)       National 27.8 (↓)            AVERAGE DAYS TO SELL UNITS AND TREND         Sydney 27.1 (↓)       Melbourne 27.4 (↓)       Brisbane 29.3 (↓)       Adelaide 26.8 (↓)       Perth 34.5 (↓)       Hobart 26.7 (↓)     Darwin 31.3 (↑)      Canberra 39.7 (↑)        National 30.4 (↓)           
Share Button

Why Is Everyone So Unhappy at Work Right Now?

U.S. employees are more dissatisfied than they were in the thick of the pandemic

By VANESSA FUHRMANS
Wed, Nov 29, 2023 8:34amGrey Clock 5 min

Americans, by many measures, are unhappier at work than they have been in years.

Despite wage increases, more paid time off and greater control over where they work, the number of U.S. workers who say they are angry, stressed and disengaged is climbing, according to Gallup’s 2023 workplace report. Meanwhile, a BambooHR analysis of data from more than 57,000 workers shows job-satisfaction scores have fallen to their lowest point since early 2020, after a 10% drop this year alone.

In interviews with workers around the country, it is clear the unhappiness is part of a rethinking of work life that began in 2020. The sources of workers’ discontent range from inflation, which is erasing much of recent pay gains, to the still-unsettled nature of the workday. People chafe against being micromanaged back to offices, yet they also find isolating aspects of hybrid and remote work. A cooling job market—especially in white-collar roles—is leaving many professionals feeling stuck.

Companies have largely moved on from pandemic operating mode, cutting costs and renewing a focus on productivity. The disconnect with workers has managers frustrated, and no quick fix seems to be at hand. Those in charge said they have given staff more money, flexibility and support, only to come up short.

The experiences of workers like Lindsey Leesmann suggest how expectations have shifted from just a few years ago. Leesmann, 38 years old, said she soured on a philanthropy job after having to return to the office two days a week earlier this year.

Prepandemic, she would have been happy working three days a week at home. “It would have been a dream come true.” Still, her team’s in-office requirements seemed like going backward, and made her feel that her professionalism and work quality were in doubt. Instead of collaborating more, she and others rarely left their desks, except for meetings or lunch, she said. Negative feelings followed her home on her hourlong commute, leaving her short-tempered with her kids.

“You try to keep work and home separate, but that sort of stuff is just impacting your mental health so much,” said Leesmann, who recently moved to a new job that requires five in-office days a month.

No more honeymoon

The discontent has business leaders struggling for answers, said Stephan Scholl, chief executive of Alight Solutions, a technology company focused on benefits and payroll administration. Many of the Fortune 100 companies on Alight’s client list boosted spending on employee benefits such as mental health, child care and well-being bonuses by 20% over the pandemic years.

“All that extra spend has not translated into happier employees,” Scholl said. In an Alight survey of 2,000 U.S. employees this year, 34% said they often dread starting their workday—an 11-percentage-point rise since 2020. Corporate clients have told him mental-health claims and costs from employee turnover are rising.

One factor is the share of workers who are relatively new to their roles after record levels of job-switching, said Benjamin Granger, chief workplace psychologist at software company Qualtrics. Many employers have focused more on hiring than situating new employees well, leaving many newbies feeling adrift. In other cases, workers discovered shiny-seeming new jobs weren’t a great fit.

The upshot is that the newest workers are among the least satisfied, Qualtrics data show—a reversal of the higher levels of enthusiasm that fresh hires typically voice. In its study of nearly 37,000 workers published last month, people less than six months into a job reported lower levels of engagement, feelings of inclusion and intent to stay than longer-tenured workers. They also scored lower on those metrics than new workers in 2022, suggesting the pay raises that lured many people to new jobs might not be as satisfying as they were a year or two ago.

“What happened to that honeymoon phase?” Granger said.

John Shurr, a 66-year-old former manufacturing engineer, took a job as an inventory manager at a heavy-equipment retailer in the spring in Missoula, Mont., after being laid off during the pandemic.

“It was a nice job title on a pretty rotten job,” said Shurr, who learned soon after starting that his duties would also include sales to walk-in customers.

When Shurr broached the subject, his boss asked him to give it a chance and said he was really needed on the showroom floor. Shurr, who describes himself as more of a computer guy, quit about a month later.

“I feel kind of trapped at the moment,” said Shurr, who has since taken a part-time job as a parts manager as he tries to find full-time work.

Bridging the distance

Long-distance relationships between bosses and staff might also be an issue. Nearly a third of workers at large firms don’t work in the same metro area as their managers, up from about 23% in February 2020, according to data from payroll provider ADP.

Distance has weakened ties among co-workers and heightened conflict, said Moshe Cohen, a mediator and negotiation coach who teaches conflict resolution at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. He has noticed more employees calling co-workers or bosses toxic or impossible, signs that trust is thin.

Cohen’s corporate clients said their employees are increasingly transactional with one another. Some are coaching workers in the finer points of dialogue, such as saying hello first before jumping into the substance of a conversation.

“The idea of slowing down, taking the time, being genuine, trying to actually establish some sort of connection with the other person—that’s really missing,” Cohen said.

One Los Angeles-based consultant in his 20s, who asked to remain anonymous because he is seeking another job, said that when he started his job at a large company last year, his largely remote colleagues were focused on their own work, unwilling to show a new hire the ropes or invite him for coffee. Many leave cameras off for video calls and few people show up at the office, making it hard to build relationships.

“There’s zero humanity,” he said, noting that he is seeking another job with a strong office culture.

The share of U.S. companies mandating office attendance five days a week has fallen this year—to 38% in October from 49% at the start of the year—according to Scoop Technologies, a software firm that developed an index to monitor workplace policies of nearly 4,500 companies.

Some companies have reversed flexible remote-work policies—in large part, they said, to boost employee engagement and productivity—only to face worker backlash.

Not all the data point downward. A Conference Board survey in November 2022 of U.S. adults showed workers were more satisfied with their jobs than they had been in years. Key contingents among the happiest employees: people who voluntarily switched roles during the pandemic and those working a mix of in-person and remote days. But that poll was taken before a spate of layoffs at high-profile companies and big declines in the number of knowledge-worker and professional jobs advertised.

At Farmers Group, workers posted thousands of mostly negative comments on the insurer’s internal social-media platform after its new CEO nixed the company’s previous policy allowing most workers to be remote.

Employees like Kandy Mimande said they felt betrayed. “We couldn’t get the ‘why,’” said the 43-year-old, who had sold her car and spent thousands of dollars to redo her home office under the remote-work policy. She shelled out $10,000 for a used car for the commute. A company spokesperson said that not all employees will support every business decision and that Farmers hasn’t seen a significant impact on staff retention.

During a brief leave, Mimande realised she no longer felt a sense of purpose from her product-management job. She resigned last month after she and her wife decided they could live on one salary.

She now helps promote a band and pet-sits. “It’s so much easier for me to report to myself,” she said.



MOST POPULAR

A divide has opened in the tech job market between those with artificial-intelligence skills and everyone else.

A 30-metre masterpiece unveiled in Monaco brings Lamborghini’s supercar drama to the high seas, powered by 7,600 horsepower and unmistakable Italian design.

Related Stories
Money
In a Sea of Tech Talent, Companies Can’t Find the Workers They Want
By CALLUM BORCHERS 02/10/2025
Money
Murdoch Family Settles Battle Over Trust
By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG 09/09/2025
Money
What We Know About America’s Billionaires: 1,135 and Counting
By INTI PACHECO & THEO FRANCIS 04/09/2025
In a Sea of Tech Talent, Companies Can’t Find the Workers They Want

A divide has opened in the tech job market between those with artificial-intelligence skills and everyone else.

By CALLUM BORCHERS
Thu, Oct 2, 2025 4 min

There has rarely, if ever, been so much tech talent available in the job market. Yet many tech companies say good help is hard to find.

What gives?

U.S. colleges more than doubled the number of computer-science degrees awarded from 2013 to 2022, according to federal data. Then came round after round of layoffs at Google, Meta, Amazon, and others.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts businesses will employ 6% fewer computer programmers in 2034 than they did last year.

All of this should, in theory, mean there is an ample supply of eager, capable engineers ready for hire.

But in their feverish pursuit of artificial-intelligence supremacy, employers say there aren’t enough people with the most in-demand skills. The few perceived as AI savants can command multimillion-dollar pay packages. On a second tier of AI savvy, workers can rake in close to $1 million a year .

Landing a job is tough for most everyone else.

Frustrated job seekers contend businesses could expand the AI talent pipeline with a little imagination. The argument is companies should accept that relatively few people have AI-specific experience because the technology is so new. They ought to focus on identifying candidates with transferable skills and let those people learn on the job.

Often, though, companies seem to hold out for dream candidates with deep backgrounds in machine learning. Many AI-related roles go unfilled for weeks or months—or get taken off job boards only to be reposted soon after.

Playing a different game

It is difficult to define what makes an AI all-star, but I’m sorry to report that it’s probably not whatever you’re doing.

Maybe you’re learning how to work more efficiently with the aid of ChatGPT and its robotic brethren. Perhaps you’re taking one of those innumerable AI certificate courses.

You might as well be playing pickup basketball at your local YMCA in hopes of being signed by the Los Angeles Lakers. The AI minds that companies truly covet are almost as rare as professional athletes.

“We’re talking about hundreds of people in the world, at the most,” says Cristóbal Valenzuela, chief executive of Runway, which makes AI image and video tools.

He describes it like this: Picture an AI model as a machine with 1,000 dials. The goal is to train the machine to detect patterns and predict outcomes. To do this, you have to feed it reams of data and know which dials to adjust—and by how much.

The universe of people with the right touch is confined to those with uncanny intuition, genius-level smarts or the foresight (possibly luck) to go into AI many years ago, before it was all the rage.

As a venture-backed startup with about 120 employees, Runway doesn’t necessarily vie with Silicon Valley giants for the AI job market’s version of LeBron James. But when I spoke with Valenzuela recently, his company was advertising base salaries of up to $440,000 for an engineering manager and $490,000 for a director of machine learning.

A job listing like one of these might attract 2,000 applicants in a week, Valenzuela says, and there is a decent chance he won’t pick any of them. A lot of people who claim to be AI literate merely produce “workslop”—generic, low-quality material. He spends a lot of time reading academic journals and browsing GitHub portfolios, and recruiting people whose work impresses him.

In addition to an uncommon skill set, companies trying to win in the hypercompetitive AI arena are scouting for commitment bordering on fanaticism .

Daniel Park is seeking three new members for his nine-person startup. He says he will wait a year or longer if that’s what it takes to fill roles with advertised base salaries of up to $500,000.

He’s looking for “prodigies” willing to work seven days a week. Much of the team lives together in a six-bedroom house in San Francisco.

If this sounds like a lonely existence, Park’s team members may be able to solve their own problem. His company, Pickle, aims to develop personalised AI companions akin to Tony Stark’s Jarvis in “Iron Man.”

Overlooked

James Strawn wasn’t an AI early adopter, and the father of two teenagers doesn’t want to sacrifice his personal life for a job. He is beginning to wonder whether there is still a place for people like him in the tech sector.

He was laid off over the summer after 25 years at Adobe , where he was a senior software quality-assurance engineer. Strawn, 55, started as a contractor and recalls his hiring as a leap of faith by the company.

He had been an artist and graphic designer. The managers who interviewed him figured he could use that background to help make Illustrator and other Adobe software more user-friendly.

Looking for work now, he doesn’t see the same willingness by companies to take a chance on someone whose résumé isn’t a perfect match to the job description. He’s had one interview since his layoff.

“I always thought my years of experience at a high-profile company would at least be enough to get me interviews where I could explain how I could contribute,” says Strawn, who is taking foundational AI courses. “It’s just not like that.”

The trouble for people starting out in AI—whether recent grads or job switchers like Strawn—is that companies see them as a dime a dozen.

“There’s this AI arms race, and the fact of the matter is entry-level people aren’t going to help you win it,” says Matt Massucci, CEO of the tech recruiting firm Hirewell. “There’s this concept of the 10x engineer—the one engineer who can do the work of 10. That’s what companies are really leaning into and paying for.”

He adds that companies can automate some low-level engineering tasks, which frees up more money to throw at high-end talent.

It’s a dynamic that creates a few handsomely paid haves and a lot more have-nots.

MOST POPULAR

From mud baths to herbal massages, Fiji’s heat rituals turned one winter escape into a soul-deep reset.

A luxury lifestyle might cost more than it used to, but how does it compare with cities around the world?

Related Stories
Property
A Designer’s Montauk Home With 180-Degree Views of Block Island Sound
By MICHAEL KAMINER 02/09/2025
Lifestyle
DIVE INTO LUXURY WITH FIJI’S CORAL GARDENER EXPERIENCE
By Jeni O'Dowd 02/09/2025
Property
Dual-Frontage Belongil Beach Hideaway Listed for $35m
By Kirsten Craze 04/08/2025
0
    Your Cart
    Your cart is emptyReturn to Shop