Employee Engagement Statistics (2026): 39 Sourced Figures

This page collects figures on employee engagement, job satisfaction and staff turnover. Every number links to the document that first published it. Most engagement figures come from Gallup, which runs the largest ongoing study of the employee experience. Job satisfaction figures come from the Conference Board. Quits and tenure figures come from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). One survey comes from a software vendor and is labeled as vendor-reported, with its sample size. HR teams that plan to measure engagement can compare survey, recognition and communication tools on the StatWharf page for employee engagement software.

Method

The data window runs from May 2024 to September 2026. Gallup’s engagement data covers calendar year 2025, with some US items measured in May 2026. StatWharf used primary sources only. That means Gallup, the Conference Board, the BLS and the original publisher of each survey. Statistics aggregators and blogs that re-quote other sources were excluded. Each figure was checked against its source in October 2026. StatWharf dropped each figure that did not appear on its primary source. No value on this page is modeled, estimated or calculated by StatWharf.

The word “engagement” means different things in different surveys. Gallup classifies each employee as engaged, not engaged or actively disengaged, based on its 12-item Q12 survey. Only employees with strong answers count as engaged. Vendor surveys often use a broader favorable-answer score. For this reason, the share of engaged employees in a vendor survey is often much higher than the Gallup share. The two kinds of figure are not comparable.

How many employees are engaged worldwide

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report was published in April 2026. It uses data collected from January to December 2025. The 2025 data includes 263,810 respondents, of whom 141,444 were employed.

Gallup reports that 2025 was the first year in which global engagement fell for two years in a row. No region increased engagement in the year. Managers saw the sharpest change. Their engagement fell five points in one year, from 27% to 22%. Fully remote workers were the most engaged group by work location. Workers in on-site jobs that cannot be done remotely were the least engaged.

Engagement in the United States

Gallup publishes a separate US series that starts in 2000. It also reports the share of US employees who agree strongly with single items from its Q12 survey. These items show where engagement breaks down in daily work.

US engagement peaked at 36% in 2020 in this series. It stood at 31% in both 2024 and 2025. Best-practice organizations are winners of the Gallup Exceptional Workplace Award. Their average of 70% is more than double the US rate.

The single items point to basic gaps. Fewer than half of US employees say they know what is expected of them. Fewer than three in ten received recognition in the past week. These are the areas that engagement surveys and recognition programs aim to measure and improve.

Engagement and business outcomes

Gallup’s Q12 meta-analysis links engagement scores to business results. The 11th edition was published in May 2024. It covers 183,806 business and work units that include 3,354,784 employees. The figures below compare units in the top quarter of engagement with units in the bottom quarter.

The meta-analysis reports median differences between groups of units. It does not show that raising engagement causes each result. The turnover gap is largest in organizations where turnover is already low.

Job satisfaction

The Conference Board has measured US job satisfaction since 1987. The 2026 release came out in June 2026. The press release does not state the sample size.

The 2026 figure is the highest in the survey’s 39-year history. Satisfaction with single job elements is much lower, at 59% on average. The Conference Board suggests that the high overall rate reflects workers who are grateful to have a job in an uncertain market. High satisfaction and low Gallup engagement can exist together. A worker can be content with a job and still not be invested in it.

Vendor survey results

Qualtrics sells employee experience software. Its 2026 Employee Experience Trends study surveyed 33,831 full-time and part-time employees in 24 countries in September and October 2025. The results are vendor-reported. Its engagement score uses a broader definition than Gallup’s.

The Qualtrics engagement score fell three points from the previous year. Qualtrics also reports that 42% of employees want leaders to listen more. Only 25% said their company increased how often it listens in the past year.

Quits, turnover and tenure

Low engagement shows up in staff turnover. The BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) counts quits across the US economy. The BLS tenure survey runs every two years.

Annual quits fell by 1.3 million in 2025. Even so, quits remained the largest part of all separations, ahead of layoffs and discharges. Median tenure rose from 3.9 years in January 2024 to 4.1 years in January 2026. Workers aged 25 to 34 stay with an employer for less than a third as long as workers aged 55 to 64.

What the figures show

Three points stand out. First, most employees are not engaged. Only 20% of employees worldwide and 31% in the US were engaged in 2025. Gallup puts the cost of low engagement at US$10 trillion in lost productivity.

Second, the manager is the main lever. Managers explain at least 70% of the variance in team engagement. Manager engagement itself fell from 27% to 22% in one year.

Third, measurement frequency matters. Qualtrics reports that engagement was twice as high at employers that listened more often. That result is vendor-reported. A business that builds a case for an engagement program can ask three questions about any figure here. How does the source define engagement? Which year does it cover? Who was surveyed?

Where to go next

HR teams choosing a tool to run surveys, recognition or internal communication can review the employee engagement software comparison. It sets out product focus, pricing model and published pricing for each product. It does not name a single best product. More sourced statistics pages are listed in the StatWharf research directory.

The next update follows three releases: the next Gallup State of the Global Workplace report, the next Conference Board job satisfaction survey and the BLS annual JOLTS estimates for 2026. Corrections to any figure can be sent to the editorial address below.

Factual corrections are free: editorial@statwharf.com.