AI adoption compounds a U.S. crisis of worker disengagement

By Priya Raman

The national signal

U.S. employee engagement has fallen to its lowest level since 2011, according to recent reports cited by Dive.

Separately, Glassdoor Chief Economist Daniel Zhao describes a low-hire market in which employed workers feel trapped in their roles and unemployed people struggle to find work. His research calls the combination a crisis of disengagement.

Layoff anxiety is rising faster than actual layoffs, according to Zhao’s research, adding to workers’ strain. Earlier Glassdoor research found that overall workplace morale drops after layoffs and can remain low for months. Zhao said: “In a world where hiring is slow and long-term unemployment is rising, the cost of layoffs to workers is higher.”

Dive names Glassdoor as the source but gives no report title, sample size, field dates, weighting method, revision history or sector breakdown, and does not define the engagement series behind the 2011 comparison.

Taken together, the labor-market evidence describes a narrower window for voluntary moves and a higher cost for involuntary ones, even before workplace-specific pressures compound the strain.

The AI divide

• AI plus explanation: Workplaces that paired AI with a clearly explained integration plan showed a 15-point higher engagement rate than companies adopting it without that transparency.
• Manager support: Employees whose managers actively supported their team’s AI use showed a 48% engagement rate, compared with 30% for employees who did not mention such support.

Some of the sharpest engagement declines appear among hybrid and remote employees at organizations that have adopted AI. Zhao suggests physical distance may create psychological distance, which AI use can amplify. Introducing AI also creates uncertainty that compounds existing insecurity and depresses engagement.

Job security is the top concern workers have about AI. That worry extends beyond people whose work AI directly affects. Generation Z workers, especially women in that cohort, voice particular concern about how AI will affect their careers.

The pattern suggests that how employers introduce AI, and whether managers explain and support its use, may matter as much to engagement as the technology itself.

Burnout and leadership trust

Workers also report feeling overwhelmed. “Burnout is on the rise,” Zhao said. He said leaders’ push for productivity and efficiency may lift output in the short term, but asks whether that faster pace is sustainable. Many workers now perform the work of several people, he said, and without proper support that pace becomes a recipe for burnout.

Mistrust and skepticism of leadership compound the strain. Glassdoor’s senior leadership satisfaction scores are falling rapidly as workers cite communication, culture and strategy. The sequence matters because intensified output, declining trust in leadership and AI uncertainty can reinforce one another, leaving employees with less control over workload, role clarity or future opportunities.

What does this change for workers?

For an employee deciding whether to stay or move, the report turns a national engagement problem into concrete questions about job security, workload, managerial support and the credibility of an employer’s stated strategy.

• Your next move: Slow hiring and rising long-term unemployment narrow the window for changing roles. The source offers no unemployment rate, hiring volume or time-to-hire figure.
• Your workload: Zhao links faster output and doing several people’s work without proper support to burnout. Workers should test whether the support matches the pace demanded.
• Your AI role: Job security is the leading concern, and the report links clear integration plans and active manager support to materially higher engagement.
• Your leadership: Falling leadership satisfaction, alongside complaints about communication, culture and strategy, signals weakening trust.

The evidence does not support a salary forecast or a probability estimate for job loss. It identifies the clearest engagement divides: explained AI implementation, active manager support and workload pressure; it also documents falling leadership satisfaction. If slow hiring and rising long-term unemployment persist, those workplace conditions will determine whether AI adoption eases workers’ disengagement or deepens it.