The share of U.S. employees who are engaged at work dropped to 29% in the third quarter of 2026, the lowest rate Gallup has recorded since 2011, according to an Oct. 28 report.
Gallup surveyed 21,648 employed U.S. adults Aug. 5-19 through its Gallup Panel. The margin of error is plus or minus 0.9 percentage points.
Here are seven things to know:
1. Engagement slipped two percentage points from the second quarter. The share of actively disengaged employees rose from 17% to 18%, and 53% of employees were not engaged.
2. Engagement peaked at 36% in 2020. It then fell to 31% in 2024 and stayed there through the first half of 2026.
3. Gallup estimates each percentage point equals about 1.6 million U.S. workers. By that measure, the third-quarter dip means about 3.2 million fewer engaged employees, and the drop since 2020 totals about 11 million.
4. Fewer employees said they clearly know what is expected of them at work. The share who strongly agreed fell from 49% in the first half of 2026 to 46% in the third quarter. That is 15 points below the 2015 peak of 61%.
5. Employees also felt less cared about. The share who strongly agreed that a supervisor or someone at work cares about them as a person fell from 40% to 37%, down from a peak of 47% in March 2020.
6. Fully remote employees saw the steepest drop, with engagement down five points. Engagement among hybrid employees fell two points. Both declines were outside the margin of error, as was the decline among all workers in remote-capable jobs. On-site workers and employees in jobs that cannot be done remotely saw dips of about one point, which were within the margin of error.
7. The engagement boost linked to AI has narrowed for remote and hybrid workers. In the second quarter, fully remote employees at AI-integrated organizations were five points more engaged than their peers elsewhere, and hybrid employees had an eight-point edge. By the third quarter, both gaps had shrunk to two to three points. For on-site workers, the gap held at about four to five points.
