Glassdoor Worklife Trends 2026: Midyear Check-in

At the end of 2025, Glassdoor published its annual worklife trends report, exploring 6 new trends looming over the job market and the workplace in 2026. Now, halfway through the year, we’re revisiting those predictions to see where we were right, where we missed the mark and what the latest data tell us about the state of work today. Altogether, the first half of 2026 paints an unfortunately grim picture of the workplace.

Recap

Employee satisfaction with senior leadership worsened in 2024 and 2025. Declining worker power and leaders making big moves to keep up in a fast-changing environment are a recipe for decaying trust.

Verdict: Spot on

Employee opinions of senior leadership are continuing to plummet in 2026, hitting new lows. In April, average senior leadership ratings in Glassdoor reviews fell below 3.5, the worst month since 2017.

In particular, ratings of senior leadership in industries like management & consulting, media & communication and technology declined sharply. These industries have seen ongoing rounds of layoffs and aggressive changes by senior leaders, including investment in AI, hiring reductions or stricter return-to-office policies.

At the end of 2025, we looked at Glassdoor reviews that discussed senior leadership or management and found that several terms were rising in prevalence, illustrating the disconnect between leaders and employees. Revisiting these terms, we see a similar trend so far in 2026 compared to 2025. Mentions of misalignment (+95%), disconnect (+52%) and distrust (+18%) are up significantly in 2026 YTD compared to 2025. Mentions of hypocrisy (+4%) and miscommunication (-9%) are relatively unchanged, but overall, these terms point to a chasm where employees feel like they can’t trust their leaders to keep their best interests in mind.

Recap

Layoffs have been creeping up over the last few years, but smaller layoffs (<50 people) in particular have become more common, rising from 38% of layoffs in 2015 to 51% in 2025, which threatens to create a pattern of ongoing “forever layoffs”, contributing to a persistent air of worker anxiety in 2026.

Verdict: On track

Layoffs still dominate the headlines, though like at the end of 2025, they continue to hover around pre-pandemic levels rather than increasing dramatically. This pattern of a sluggish labor market, increased layoff anxiety, and the occasional mass layoff characterizes what we called the forever layoff. Lingering layoff levels are seen most clearly in JOLTS data where 1,692,000 workers were laid off or discharged in April 2026, slightly below the pre-pandemic average of 1,809,250.

Layoffs remaining near pre-pandemic levels has led some to characterize the job market as “low hire, low fire”, but that’s not quite right. The picture varies significantly by industry with some seeing layoff rates still well below pre-pandemic levels, others returning to “normal” layoff levels and others surging upward. For example, construction has seen a precipitous decline in its layoff rate from 2.9% on average in 2019 to 1.8% in 2026, while information (which includes media and technology) has seen a dramatic increase from 1.4% to 2%. Professional & business services layoff rates are very slightly above pre-pandemic level (2.05% in 2026 vs. 1.98% in 2019). Finance & insurance shows a similar pattern (0.5% in 2026 vs. 0.42% in 2019).

In WARN Act layoff notices, we again find that small layoffs of less than 50 people made up 50% of WARN Act filings in 2026, slightly lower than 2023–2025 but still higher than prior years when layoffs tended to be larger.

Layoffs are creeping up in certain white-collar sectors, while smaller layoffs remain a more common feature of the current job market. But regardless of the mixed trends in the number of layoffs, our prediction was right about one important thing—layoffs are still top of mind for workers, and anxiety about layoffs and job security are still skyrocketing. In May 2026, mentions of job insecurity from current employees were up 63% year-over-year, while explicit mentions of layoffs were up 29% year-over-year. And past Glassdoor research has found that layoffs have a persistent negative effect on culture, lasting even multiple years after the initial layoff, suggesting that the anxiety from this trickle of forever layoffs is not going to disappear anytime soon.

Recap

Employers pushing return-to-office policies are implicitly and even explicitly prioritizing in-person workers for career growth. As worker power declines, workers are increasingly facing a difficult choice between maintaining remote & hybrid flexibility and pursuing faster career growth. 

Verdict: Correct

Work from home rates are continuing to decline slowly as employers put pressure on workers to return to the office, limiting fully remote options. The percentage of full-time work days spent working from home has decreased to 25.7% in May 2026 from 27.2% in May 2025. Similarly, the share of workers with fully remote jobs has fallen to 11.1% in May 2026 from 12.5% in May 2025. Hybrid work has been more stable with the share of workers in hybrid roles relatively unchanged at 26.8% in May 2026, compared to 27.1% in May 2025, though the reduction in days spent working from home may suggest stricter requirements on how many days workers are required to come in.

Work-from-home is continuing to lose its shine for workers. At the end of 2025, we found that employee satisfaction among remote and hybrid workers had been declining for several years, relative to their in-person peers. The gap extended beyond overall satisfaction to career opportunities, work-life balance, and senior leadership, as many workers felt growing pressure to return to the office or risk falling behind.

That trend has continued in the latest data from 2026. Remote employees now actually report lower work-life balance ratings (3.97 on average in 2026) while hybrid workers retain an edge (4.10) over other employees (4.03). Hybrid employees still retain an edge on work-life balance compared to others, but the gap has narrowed in 2026. Remote workers dissatisfied with work-life balance may be feeling increased pressure to put long hours in at home, blurring the boundaries between work and home life and giving up some of the hours gained from not having to commute into the office. In 2026, average career opportunity ratings were 3.16 for remote workers, 3.35 for hybrid workers, and 3.67 for other workers.

Overall, remote and hybrid work arrangements will remain a part of the landscape of work in the future, but the decline in worker power is putting the squeeze on remote and hybrid workers.

Recap

From 2022 through the end of 2025, employee satisfaction in occupations highly exposed to AI declined only slightly. The evidence was that AI had not broken through into having a broad impact on workers yet as businesses have been slow to actually implement new LLM technology enough to impact workers.

Verdict: Worse than expected

The fast-changing AI landscape is also reshaping the workplace at a rapid pace. Our point-of-view at the end of 2025 was too sanguine. As AI technology, hype and pressure explode, worker concern about AI has risen even faster than anticipated.

The share of Glassdoor reviews that mention AI-related keywords have skyrocketed, more than tripling (+240%) year-over-year as of May 2026. For comparison, AI is mentioned in reviews more often than inflation, despite rising energy prices boosting inflation concerns 34% year-over-year, and more often than burnout, mentions of which have surged 43% year-over-year.

This rapid increase in discussion of AI is turning negative. Workers are concerned by leaders demanding workers use AI while simultaneously touting AI as a reason for layoffs and reduced hiring. As recently as last year, the majority of discussions of AI on Glassdoor were positive (55% positive compared to 41% negative). That sentiment has taken a turn for the worse and flipped in 2026—the majority of discussions about AI on Glassdoor are now negative (53% of reviews are negative compared to 43% positive).

However, like in our previous analysis, we still see little evidence that AI is having a disproportionately negative impact on employee satisfaction in occupations highly exposed to AI like translators, administrative assistants, or web developers. There’s no statistically significant difference in overall employee satisfaction or career opportunity ratings for highly exposed occupations before LLMs and after. Even when focusing on early-career workers specifically, we see no statistically significant impact.

The contrast of rising AI anxiety but little disproportionate impact on AI-exposed occupations could be explained by the broad concern about AI that is not limited to just workers in jobs at risk of direct replacement. For example, some companies have undergone layoffs in order to reallocate efforts to AI products and services. These layoffs are because of AI, in a sense, but they are not directly automating jobs away. That means even workers in jobs that cannot be automated away may still be at risk. Additionally, the hype around AI and rapidly-changing capabilities may be stoking anxiety for workers across many different occupations and industries, who fear that their jobs may be safe from AI automation right now but may not be in a few years.

Recap

Job applicants were 12% less likely to reject a job offer in 2025 compared to 2023. As hiring rates remain sluggish and job seekers feel like their options are scarce, job offer decline rates are likely to keep trending downwards.

Verdict: Accurate

The latest Glassdoor interview data confirms that job offer decline rates are continuing to fall. Job offer decline rates fell to 21.4% for interviews that began between January 1 and April 15, 2026, down 5.1 percentage points from the same period last year. Job seekers tend to refuse more offers in the first quarter of the year, so the seasonally adjusted rate was even lower at 19.6%.

Hiring has slowed dramatically over the past year as many companies adopted a wait-and-see approach with the unfolding polycrisis including war, tariffs, AI displacement, and rising interest rates. Given this slow job market, any movement - a call back, an interview, and certainly an offer - is precious for job seekers. These lower job offer refusal rates demonstrate just how much candidates are struggling to land offers. Unfortunately, 2026 has continued to offer slim pickings to workers looking for a job.

Recap

Inflation-adjusted wage growth for early career workers was negative from 2020–2022 with the pandemic-era inflation surge, but earnings outpaced inflation in 2025, providing some balanced optimism that new grads who are able to get a job will finally see higher purchasing power.

Verdict: Falling short

Unfortunately, inflation rose again as American households face higher energy prices due to the U.S.-Iran war in a way we did not anticipate at the end of 2025 when inflation had finally fallen. 

Early career earnings, which finally recovered to 2020 levels in 2025, have entered slightly negative territory again. Year-over-year inflation in April 2026 ticked back up 3.8% compared to 2.3% in April of last year. This pushes up the break-even rate for early-career wage growth, and we didn’t see quite that level of growth in Glassdoor data. Early career real earnings in 2026 were 0.7% below 2020 levels.

However, these patterns vary across the country as different cities face different wage growth and cost of living trends. In April of this year, Glassdoor and Redfin collaborated to rank U.S. cities with the most to offer early-career workers. The interplay between wages, job availability, and housing costs make some cities a better option for young workers than others, and our ranking included other factors that impact the quality for young workers: career opportunity, walkability, work-life balance, and more. Washington D.C., Omaha, and Boston topped the list in terms of large cities, and the report also includes rankings for small and mid-sized cities.

Trend 1: The great employee-leader disconnect

The first two plots show the average rating of senior management by month. The dataset includes only workers who are current, full-time employees, and encompasses 3.3 million reviews from January 2019 through May 20, 2026. The industry split presents annual averages, and includes 799,071 Glassdoor reviews.

The third plot shows the percentage increase in the usage of select terms in Glassdoor reviews that mention senior leadership or management from 2025 to 2026 year-to-date. Only reviews from current full-time or part-time employees in the U.S. were included. 2026 data is year-to-date through June 7, 2026. Mentions were normalized by the total number of reviews during the time period. Different forms of the same term were grouped together. For example, “disconnect” includes but is not limited to “disconnect”, “disconnected”, and “disconnection”.

Trend 2: The “forever layoff” sets in

The first two charts present layoffs & discharges data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS). The first chart shows the monthly level of layoffs & discharges, seasonally adjusted from January 2015 through April 2026, with the Spring 2020 spike truncated. The second chart averages seasonally adjusted layoffs & discharge rates in 2019 and 2026 (year-to-date through April 2026) by industry.

The third chart presents WARN Act layoff notifications (aggregated by layoffdata.com) from January 1, 2015 through May 19, 2026, excluding closures and grouped by the number of employees impacted. Since WARN act filings are at the establishment level, it is possible that some filings could be part of the same broader layoff (e.g. one employer laying off 30 employees at one location and 30 at another would show as two layoffs impacting fewer than 50 employees, rather than one layoff impacting 50-249 employees), but inconsistent employer naming in WARN filings presents a challenge for aggregating these events at scale. Resolving this issue is not critical for the result, as a trend of employers laying off a smaller number of employees spread across multiple establishments still represents a move towards more frequent, lower-impact layoffs.

The final chart shows keyword prevalence in 6.4 million U.S.-based Glassdoor reviews from current full-time or part-time employees between January 2019 and May 15, 2026. Layoff keywords include terms like layoffs, downsizing, job cuts, furlough, while job insecurity keywords include terms like job security, anxiety, instability, and uncertainty.

Trend 3: The slow-mo RTO will continue

This chart is based on 3.4 million Glassdoor reviews submitted from current full-time or part-time employees from January 2020 through May 20, 2026. Predominately non-remote eligible occupations have been excluded from the analysis. We include industry and high-level occupation controls in a regression analysis to normalize any potential changes in the composition of Glassdoor reviews over the time period. Not all reviewers include rating subfactors, so the sample sizes are somewhat reduced for the other panels in the chart: 2.7 million for career opportunity and work-life balance, and 2.6 million for senior management.

Trend 4: AI employees isn’t bringing employees down—yet

The first two charts are based on 6.4 million Glassdoor reviews from U.S. current full-time or part-time employees. The first chart calculates the share of reviews submitted in the month that mention related keywords. AI-related keywords include terms like “artificial intelligence”, “AI”, “LLM”, and “ChatGPT”. Inflation-related keywords include terms like “inflation”, “cost of living”, and “gas prices”. Layoff-related keywords include terms like “layoffs”, “laid off”, “made redundant”. Burnout-related keywords include terms like “burnout”, “burned out”, “burn us out”.

In the second plot, Glassdoor reviews are grouped by sentiment and year. Sentiment is determined by where AI-related keywords are mentioned. For example, if “artificial intelligence” is mentioned in the “Pros” section of the review, it is categorized as a positive mention; if mentioned in the “Cons”, it is categorized as negative. If a review mentions AI-related keywords in both sections, it is categorized as mixed.

In the third plot, we analyzed 7.25 million Glassdoor reviews from U.S. full-time or part-time, current or former employees for jobs held from January 1, 2019 through June 7, 2026. We mapped Glassdoor’s occupational categories to SOC 2018 occupations and then to a measure of occupational exposure to AI produced by researchers at OpenAI and the University of Pennsylvania (Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin, Rock 2024). We used the authors’ preferred measure of occupational exposure, the human-rated 𝛃 and identify the 20% of SOC occupations with the highest occupational exposure scores.

We show coefficients from the results of three regressions. The leftmost bar is from a regression of overall Glassdoor rating on treatment period (2022–2026) interacted with an indicator for the top quintile of AI exposure, giving a simple difference in difference estimate of the change in Glassdoor rating from pre-LLMs to post-LLMs for high exposure occupations vs. all other occupations. The middle bar repeats this approach but for career opportunities ratings. The rightmost bar gives a simple triple difference in difference estimate by interacting treatment period, AI exposure and a flag to indicate whether the worker is early-career or not (defined as 0–4 years of relevant experience). The estimate reported for the rightmost bar is the coefficient of high AI exposure interacted with the treatment period indicator added to the coefficient of high AI exposure interacted with treatment period interacted with the early career indicator.

Trend 5: Job seekers will take what they can get

This chart shows average job offer refusal rates across 180,179 interview reviews left on Glassdoor for interviews that began between January 2020 and April 15 2026 that resulted in a job offer. The calculation shows the percent of offers rejected by the candidates. We include both annual rates and seasonally-adjusted quarterly rates.

Trend 6: Better pay for the new grads who can land a job

The first chart is based on two data sources: 7.2 million salaries submitted on Glassdoor from workers with 0-4 years of relevant experience in their current job from January 2020 through May 20, 2026, and CPI inflation data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.