Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index: Round trip in 2025
Daniel Zhao
Chief Economist at Glassdoor | Jan 7, 2026
Employee confidence ticked up in December, ending the year only slightly lower than where it started the year, according to the latest data from the Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index. The share of employees reporting a positive 6-month business outlook rose to 46.5% in December 2025, up from 44.8% in November but down from 46.9% last year in December 2024. During 2025, employee confidence hit a new record low in June in Glassdoor data stretching back almost a decade to 2016, but as fears about trade wars and the government shutdown began to shift into the rearview, worker confidence round tripped back to a similar level as a year ago.
Employee confidence by industry
- With the government shutdown over, some of the most affected industries have had diverging worker confidence trends. Employee confidence in aerospace & defense, which includes the military, improved by 1.3 percentage points in December compared to November. By contrast, nonprofit & NGO employee confidence fell 0.3 percentage points and government & public administration employee confidence plummeted another 3 percentage points, ending 2025 a full 5.8 percentage points below its December 2024 level, the worst of any industry. With the federal deferred resignation effective date passing at the end of October, approximately 150,000 workers have rolled off federal payrolls.
- In white collar industries, December was a mixed bag with financial services (+0.6 percentage points month-over-month), legal (+3.1 percentage points), pharmaceutical & biotechnology (+1.5 percentage points) improving but information technology (-1.8 percentage points) and management & consulting (-0.5 percentage points) declining.
- During the ever-important holiday season, employee confidence in retail & wholesale (-0.4 percentage points month-over-month) and transportation & logistics (-2.1 percentage points) declined modestly, though both remain up compared to the same point last year (+1.7 and +0.3 percentage points year-over-year, respectively), suggesting that holiday consumer spending remained fairly strong in 2025.
Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index by Industry
| Industry | Dec 2024 | Nov 2025 | Dec 2025 | MoM | YoY |
| Aerospace & Defense | 53.5% | 47.4% | 48.8% | 1.3% | -4.8% |
| Arts, Entertainment & Recreation | 40.4% | 35.6% | 37.8% | 2.2% | -2.5% |
| Construction, Repair & Maintenance Services | 54.6% | 51.0% | 52.3% | 1.3% | -2.3% |
| Education | 48.4% | 46.7% | 47.8% | 1.1% | -0.6% |
| Energy, Mining & Utilities | 52.5% | 49.1% | 49.8% | 0.7% | -2.7% |
| Financial Services | 52.9% | 51.9% | 52.5% | 0.6% | -0.5% |
| Government & Public Administration | 46.8% | 44.0% | 41.0% | -3.0% | -5.8% |
| Healthcare | 49.8% | 48.4% | 48.8% | 0.4% | -1.0% |
| Hotels & Travel Accommodation | 45.3% | 40.9% | 42.9% | 2.0% | -2.4% |
| Human Resources & Staffing | 58.0% | 57.1% | 56.2% | -1.0% | -1.9% |
| Information Technology | 53.3% | 50.9% | 49.1% | -1.8% | -4.2% |
| Insurance | 56.3% | 53.1% | 53.0% | 0.0% | -3.3% |
| Legal | 59.1% | 53.3% | 56.4% | 3.1% | -2.7% |
| Management & Consulting | 51.5% | 49.1% | 48.7% | -0.5% | -2.8% |
| Manufacturing | 42.3% | 41.2% | 40.9% | -0.3% | -1.4% |
| Media & Communication | 42.2% | 39.6% | 40.4% | 0.9% | -1.8% |
| Nonprofit & NGO | 48.0% | 43.0% | 42.6% | -0.3% | -5.4% |
| Personal Consumer Services | 39.4% | 42.6% | 41.8% | -0.7% | 2.4% |
| Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology | 40.9% | 39.5% | 41.0% | 1.5% | 0.1% |
| Real Estate | 60.4% | 55.9% | 55.8% | -0.1% | -4.7% |
| Restaurants & Food Service | 41.1% | 38.0% | 36.1% | -2.0% | -5.0% |
| Retail & Wholesale | 41.3% | 43.4% | 43.0% | -0.4% | 1.7% |
| Telecommunications | 43.4% | 42.6% | 40.1% | -2.5% | -3.2% |
| Transportation & Logistics | 43.6% | 46.1% | 44.0% | -2.1% | 0.3% |
Employee confidence by seniority
Confidence declined for entry level and mid level employees in December (-1.2 and -1 percentage points month-over-month respectively). Mid level employees specifically have seen the largest drop in employee confidence over the last year, declining 3.4 percentage points compared to a 1.2 percentage point drop for both entry and senior level employees since December 2024. As businesses pushed increasing efficiency and trimming management layers, mid level employees spent 2025 under high pressure.
Methodology
The Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index is a new report that provides a real-time pulse on the economy from the lens of employees. As one of the world’s leading sites for insights on jobs and companies, Glassdoor collects tens of thousands of employee ratings of their employers’ six-month business outlook (rated as “positive”, “neutral” or “negative”) each month.
The index is the share of U.S. full-time and part-time employees who report a positive six-month business outlook for their employer. The index is reweighted to account for changes in the platform and by industry to match a nationally representative mix of employee ratings by industry. Data presented at the industry and seniority level are three-month trailing averages.
Data for December 2025 is updated through December 30, 2025. In subsequent updates, we will revise partial or preliminary data from previous months.
To read more about the Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index, please read our launch paper.
An Excel file containing the Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index data is available here.
Daniel Zhao
Daniel Zhao is Chief Economist at Glassdoor. On Glassdoor's Economic Research team, he has conducted research using Glassdoor's unique data on a variety of topics affecting job seekers and employers ranging from the health of the job market to pay transparency to employee engagement & retention. His work has been cited in publications like the New York Times, the Harvard Business Review and more. Prior to joining the Economic Research team, he also worked on improving the user experience for Glassdoor’s consumer jobs product and mobile app. He holds a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics and economics from Harvard College.
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