Employee happiness hits a 4-year low: These industries have been hit the hardest

Four years since the start of a global pandemic, and the work world still hasn't adjusted to the influx of changes that came with it. Employees are feeling the strain, and aren't afraid to speak up. 

Return-to-office mandates, AI anxiety or the threat of layoffs have led to a drop in employee happiness, according to HR software company BambooHR, which measures happiness by whether employees would recommend their place of work to others. A company's score can range from 100 (people should definitely work here) to negative 100 (no one should work here). Compared to December 2020, the average score of over 1,600 companies decreased by 10%, falling to a four-year low of approximately 37 points. 

"So much has changed in the last four years, and humans, by nature, don't do well with change," says Anita Grantham, Bamboo's head of HR. "There's been job layoffs, job consolidation and employees asking themselves if they will even be able to use their skills in the future with new technology."

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However, some industries fared better than others. In fact, only non-profit and tech companies saw an overall drop in their ranking, with tech falling from 44 points to 36 in just a year. Tech used to be the second-happiest industry but now ranks at number four. Meanwhile, the non-profit sector was beaten out by education and is now ranked seventh happiest out of the eight industries in the running. 

Grantham isn't surprised by these latest dips, noting that layoffs are hitting the tech sector the hardest. According to layoffs.fyi, a platform that tracks tech layoffs, tech companies have laid off nearly 51,000 workers in just the first three months of 2024. At the same time, non-profit companies are likely seeing fewer donations as Americans struggle to stretch their wages to meet their living expenses.

"There's less money in the middle class — the [U.S.] is creating a two-class system, and people can't afford to give," says Grantham. "It takes a real business plan to generate a sustainable non-profit that can succeed in such a competitive, tough time, especially when [political] administrations change and funding levels change."

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Construction and healthcare continue to rank first and last respectively, with construction workers being even happier now than they were in 2022. According to BambooHR, their happiness score jumped two points to 48, while healthcare kept its score at 33. Grantham attributes the construction industry's success to its ability to be constant despite the pandemic and emerging tech.

"I've talked to a bunch of founders and small business owners in construction, and they're getting happier," she says. "My take on that is that they didn't get taken out of their work environments and stayed in a flow of delivering products to their customers. They can also see the impact of their work because they're building something tangible."

Grantham points out that while the healthcare industry did get to work in the same environment, their working conditions significantly worsened in the last four years as staffing shortages hit new highs and patient-to-staff ratios become increasingly dangerous for both parties.

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"The people that make the decisions, meaning the boards that run these hospital systems, are disconnected from their frontline workers," says Grantham. "And healthcare costs continue to go up but that isn't affecting workers' wages. The insurance companies continue to make more money, but the people administering all this care get left out."

For employers who want their workplace to make a passing grade, Grantham encourages them to be as transparent as possible about why they can't increase wages and what the future of their company will look like as they wade through a sea of changes. Most importantly, Grantham asks that employers listen to their employees' criticisms and take them seriously.

"It's really important that you ask for that feedback," she says. "We do this for products all the time with customer surveys, but we don't do it for people building the products."