Global employee engagement has fallen to 20% in 2025, reaching its lowest level in five years and marking the first consecutive annual decline in a decade, according to Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report. The drop is costing the world economy an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity—roughly 9% of global GDP.
The decline represents a significant shift from 2022, when global engagement peaked at 23%. Gallup’s research, which surveyed over 140,000 employed respondents across 140+ countries in 2025, found that 64% of employees are not engaged and 16% are actively disengaged, leaving only one in five workers psychologically invested in their jobs.
Manager engagement has declined most sharply, dropping nine percentage points since 2022 to reach just 22% in 2025. The largest year-over-year decline occurred between 2024 and 2025, when manager engagement fell five points from 27% to 22%, according to Gallup. This shift is particularly significant because managers historically enjoyed higher engagement than individual contributors—a gap that has nearly disappeared.
The decline has been universal. No region of the world increased engagement in the past year, with South Asia experiencing the steepest drop of five percentage points. The slump appears partly driven by organizational flattening, particularly in India’s IT sector, where employers have cut mid-level and senior management roles amid AI adoption and hiring slowdowns.
Researchers and organizational experts attribute the disengagement to systemic workplace issues rather than individual employee failures. Forbes contributor Aparna Rae noted that organizations have treated engagement problems as personal deficiencies, sending disengaged workers to training or employee assistance programs, when the real issue lies in organizational design. “What’s missing isn’t effort,” according to Aoife O’Brien, an organizational behaviorist cited in Rae’s analysis. “Most leaders genuinely want to do better. What’s missing is a diagnosis of the actual problem.”
The cost of disengagement extends beyond the headline $10 trillion figure. Estimates place the cost of burnout alone at $4,000 to $21,000 per employee annually, meaning a typical 1,000-person company loses over $5 million yearly. Yet despite these consequences, less than a third of U.S. employees in organizations implementing AI report that their managers actively support their team’s use of the technology, limiting the potential for technology to improve engagement.
Gallup found that best-practice organizations—those prioritizing engagement as a long-term business strategy—maintain manager engagement at 79%, nearly four times the global average. These world-class workplaces span all regions and industries, suggesting that high engagement is achievable but requires sustained organizational commitment rather than short-term interventions.
Sources
- Gallup — State of the Global Workplace 2026 report; global engagement metrics, manager engagement decline, regional data, and $10 trillion cost estimate
- Forbes — May 2026 article on employee engagement decline and organizational systems approach to disengagement
- Inc. — May 2026 reporting on Gallup’s 2026 data and $10 trillion annual cost
- Benefits and Pensions Monitor — April 2026 coverage of Gallup findings on five-year low in engagement
