Is the 'Great Gloom' lifting? US employee happiness sees uptick, but unevenly

America’s workforce might finally be emerging from ‘The Great Gloom’, a period of several years starting in 2021 characterized by declining employee content. According to the latest Employee Happiness Index, American workers reported being happier in Q1 2024. The modest increase of 1.6% is certainly encouraging after years of decline, however it’s important to note that happiness did not go up evenly across demographic groups and professional sectors.

The study, which was put forth by the HR software company BambooHR, drew from anonymized responses of over 57,000 unique employees between January 2020 and March 2024. The employees’ answers are crunched into a metric called the Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS).

Here is how BambooHR describes it: “It consists of a numeric rating of how likely employees are to recommend the organization as a place to work. Employees select a score from 0–10, and these scores, categorized as Promoters (9 or 10), Passives (8), and Detractors (7 or below), are used to quantify how employees feel about their company.”

“Above 0 is good. Above 20 is favorable. Above 50 is excellent. Above 80 is world class.”

According to the study, some professions are more conducive to happiness than others, at least under current economic conditions. Construction, notably, is the happiest industry and the only one to boast an eNPS over 50. The study’s authors explain that construction workers’ happiness correlates with increased spending on construction projects, rising wages in response to labor shortages in the sector, and new residential and commercial projects.

Other notable high performers are travel and hospitality and education. The reported happiness of workers in travel and hospitality increased substantially, posting its highest score since April 2020. Education came out of a period of decline, hitting its highest eNPS score since March 2021.

Related: Employees’ expectations for workplace wellbeing are higher than ever

Some sectors posted declines in employee happiness, however. Perhaps most notably, Tech hit a new four-year low in February 2024. According to the study’s authors, big layoffs over the last year and return-to-office mandates are likely to blame. Finance also performed poorly this past quarter, with employee happiness dropping to September 2023 levels.

Employee happiness, or lack thereof, also correlates with other factors. For example, employees with a tenure of less than 3 years at their companies continue to be happier than more tenured workers. Employees at smaller companies also consistently outperform their counterparts at larger companies.