Employee loneliness is reported across every major workplace context measured in the available surveys. Gallup found that 22% of employees worldwide experienced loneliness “a lot” of the previous day in both 2024 and 2025, up from 20% in 2023. Other studies show meaningful differences by work arrangement, age, job level, region, engagement and belonging.
Contents
- Global employee loneliness over time
- Differences by gender, age and job level
- Work arrangement and regional patterns
- Loneliness, engagement and workplace connection
- U.S. loneliness, isolation and belonging
- Reported workplace consequences and correlates
Global employee loneliness over time
Gallup’s global results measure whether employees experienced loneliness a lot during the previous day. The measure is therefore a recent emotional experience, rather than a claim that an employee is persistently lonely or socially isolated.
The worldwide share was 20% in 2023, 22% in 2024 and 22% in 2025. The 2024 and 2025 results are the same, while the 2023 result is lower. These figures come from Gallup’s Global Data Summary - State of the Global Workplace 2026; the source labels the observations by year and does not turn them into a forecast. Gallup, Global Data Summary - State of the Global Workplace 2026.
The time series gives a clear baseline for interpreting the more detailed 2025 comparisons: roughly one in five employees worldwide reported a lot of loneliness on the previous day, with the reported level at 22% in the latest two years represented here. Because the same question is reported across the years, the figures can be read as a compact trend description, but they should not be treated as a measure of lifetime or chronic loneliness.
Differences by gender, age and job level
Gallup’s 2025 worldwide breakdown shows relatively close gender results. Female employees had a 21% loneliness rate, while male employees had a 22% rate. The figures describe the share in each group who experienced loneliness a lot during the previous day.
Age differences were also visible. Among employees younger than 35, 23% experienced loneliness a lot the previous day. Among employees aged 35 or older, the corresponding figure was 21%. The younger-group result was therefore higher in this survey’s 2025 global comparison, although the statistics do not establish why the groups differed.
Job level produced another two-point contrast. Managers had a 23% rate, compared with 21% for individual contributors. This does not mean that every manager experiences more loneliness than every individual contributor; it is a group-level comparison of the reported previous-day measure.
| 2025 global employee group | Experienced loneliness a lot the previous day |
|---|---|
| Female employees | 21% |
| Male employees | 22% |
| Younger than 35 | 23% |
| Aged 35 or older | 21% |
| Managers | 23% |
| Individual contributors | 21% |
All six figures are from Gallup’s Global Data Summary - State of the Global Workplace 2026, using the 2025 worldwide results. The close values across categories are important: the data show differences, but no category is close to zero and no single demographic grouping explains the global pattern by itself.
Work arrangement and regional patterns
Work arrangement was associated with a wider spread in Gallup’s 2025 worldwide results. Exclusively remote employees had a 24% rate, and hybrid employees also had a 24% rate. On-site employees with remote-capable jobs had an 18% rate, while on-site employees in non-remote-capable jobs had a 21% rate.
| 2025 global work arrangement | Experienced loneliness a lot the previous day |
|---|---|
| Exclusively remote | 24% |
| Hybrid | 24% |
| On-site, remote-capable job | 18% |
| On-site, non-remote-capable job | 21% |
The work-arrangement categories are not interchangeable. “On-site” is split by whether the job is remote-capable, while remote and hybrid categories describe different patterns of working away from the workplace. The figures should consequently be read as the source’s four reported groups, not as a simple remote-versus-office experiment. Gallup, Global Data Summary - State of the Global Workplace 2026.
Regional results also varied. In 2025, 28% of employees in South Asia experienced loneliness a lot during the previous day, as did 28% of employees in Sub-Saharan Africa. East Asia recorded 23%, the Middle East and North Africa 22%, and Southeast Asia 19%.
These regional percentages use the same Gallup measure but represent different geographic populations. They are not estimates for all countries in a region separately, and they do not indicate that geography alone causes loneliness. Their value is descriptive: they show how the reported previous-day experience differed among the regional groups included in the global summary.
Loneliness, engagement and workplace connection
Gallup’s separate 2023 global results reported that 20% of employees worldwide experienced loneliness a lot during the previous day. In that same source, fully remote employees had a 25% rate, hybrid employees 21%, and employees working exclusively on-site 16%.
The 2023 results also compared working and unemployed adults. Working adults had a 20% loneliness rate, compared with 32% among unemployed adults. Within employees, engaged employees had a 17% rate, not-engaged employees 19%, and actively disengaged employees 31%.
These categories describe association, not a proven cause-and-effect pathway. Still, the engagement comparison shows a pronounced difference between the reported rates for engaged and actively disengaged employees. Gallup, “1 in 5 Employees Worldwide Feel Lonely”.
The same Gallup source reported findings from a separate U.S. study, reported in 2024. U.S. employees who were engaged were 64% less likely to be lonely than employees who were not engaged. Employees who said their opinions counted were 39% less likely to be lonely, and those who said they got to do what they did best every day were 37% less likely to be lonely. Employees who said they had a best friend at work were 21% less likely to be lonely.
Those U.S. findings use “less likely” comparisons rather than the global percentages above. They should not be converted into a new prevalence rate without the underlying study details. Their central pattern is that voice, strengths use, engagement and a close workplace relationship were each associated with lower reported loneliness in the separate U.S. study.
U.S. loneliness, isolation and belonging
The American Psychological Association’s 2023 Work in America Survey used a workplace loneliness-or-isolation measure for U.S. workers. Overall, 26% said they had experienced feelings of loneliness or isolation at work.
The occupational results differed. Thirty-five percent of workers in customer, client or patient service jobs reported workplace loneliness or isolation. The corresponding shares were 23% for office workers and 22% for manual-labor workers. The survey therefore recorded its highest listed occupational result among customer-, client- or patient-service workers.
Household income was also associated with different reported levels. Thirty-one percent of U.S. workers with household incomes below $50,000 reported workplace loneliness or isolation. The figure was 24% among workers with household incomes from $50,000 to $124,900.
The same survey reported 25% among fully in-person U.S. workers. This is a U.S. result from 2023 and should not be directly substituted for Gallup’s global work-arrangement categories, which use a different survey and measure.
Belonging was widely valued even as some workers did not experience it. Ninety-four percent of U.S. workers said it was very or somewhat important that their workplace be a place where they felt they belonged. At the same time, 20% strongly or somewhat disagreed that they felt they belonged at work.
The belonging results varied by group. Twenty-three percent of Black U.S. workers disagreed that they felt they belonged at work, and 22% of Hispanic U.S. workers disagreed. Among U.S. front-line workers, 25% did not feel a sense of belonging at work. APA, 2023 Work in America Survey.
Reported workplace consequences and correlates
Cigna’s 2020 U.S. report connected loneliness with several self-reported workplace outcomes. Lonely U.S. workers said they were twice as likely to miss a workday because of illness as non-lonely workers, and five times as likely to miss a workday because of stress. These are reported relative-likelihood comparisons from 2020, not forecasts of absence for a particular employee or organization.
Productivity and quality responses also differed. Fifty-four percent of non-lonely U.S. workers said they were more productive than their peers most or all of the time, compared with 45% of lonely workers. Four percent of non-lonely workers said their work quality was lower than it should be, compared with 12% of lonely workers.
The report used the UCLA Loneliness Scale for several connection comparisons. U.S. employees with a best friend or good friend at work had an average score of 43.2, compared with 48.8 among those without that connection. Employees who said technology helped them make meaningful coworker connections had a score of 43.9, compared with 48.0 for others.
Shared goals showed another difference: employees who felt they shared goals with colleagues had a score of 43.7, compared with 51.6 for those who did not. Employees reporting poor coworker relationships had a score of 53.7, compared with 43.7 among those reporting good coworker relationships.
The Cigna figures describe scale scores and self-reported relationships, so a higher score should be understood within the UCLA scale comparison rather than as a percentage of lonely workers. Cigna, Loneliness and the Workplace: 2020 U.S. Report.
The UK results offer a newer workplace-specific distribution. The CIPD Good Work Index 2025: Survey report found that 14% of UK working adults always or often felt lonely at work, while 33% sometimes felt lonely at work. Another 52% rarely or never felt lonely at work. These response groups are explicitly about frequency at work and are not the same measure as Gallup’s previous-day question or the APA’s loneliness-or-isolation wording. CIPD, Good Work Index 2025.
The measures across these sources are therefore best kept distinct: Gallup reports a previous-day experience, APA reports workplace loneliness or isolation and belonging, Cigna reports workplace associations and UCLA scale scores, and CIPD reports frequency among UK working adults. Together, they show that employee loneliness is measurable across global, national and workplace-specific surveys, while the exact percentage depends on the population, year and question used.