Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index: Entry-Level Sentiment Sours
Daniel Zhao
Chief Economist at Glassdoor | Apr 2, 2024
Employee confidence rebounded in March, according to the latest data from the Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index. The share of employees reporting a positive 6-month business outlook rose to 46.1% in March 2024, up from 45.2% in February but still down from 51 percent last March. Employee confidence remains muted as employees remain concerned about job security and their employers’ growth prospects, but the modest improvement in March hopefully presages a turning point in sentiment.
Layoffs in the headlines have faded after a spurt at the start of the year, but anxiety among employees continues to rise as the share of Glassdoor reviews that mention layoffs increased month-over-month in March and are up 28% year-over-year. We saw a similar trend in the second half of 2023 when layoffs faded after a late-2022, early-2023 surge, but discussions amongst employees continued to rise. Economic anxiety about job security does not necessarily match actual layoffs one-to-one and the impacts on morale and employee sentiment may last longer than employers realize.
Relatedly, employees have also picked up on the “overhiring” reasoning that executives have used for layoffs. Many employers, especially in tech, have explained that layoffs are an unfortunate consequence of pandemic over-hiring in 2021 as employers chased pandemic-era trends that didn’t end up bearing out. The share of reviews that mention overhiring has increased 24% year-over-year and is also up 3.4 times the level from March 2022, before the recent waves of layoffs spread. Though interestingly, few employees seemed concerned about overhiring before layoffs began.
Employee Confidence by Industry
Employee confidence has held up best over the last year in industries like Government & Public Administration (-0.3pp year-over-year), Healthcare (-2.9pp) and Education (-3.5pp), the smallest declines of any industry in our data. These three industries have also accounted for about 3 in 5 (59%) of jobs added in the U.S. so far in 2024, which helps explain why employees are more confident. These industries tend to be more resistant to recessions: demand for healthcare services continues to grow steadily as the American population ages and government and education jobs are tied more to budgetary cycles than the business cycle.
Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index by Industry
| Industry | Mar 2023 | Feb 2024 | Mar 2024 | MoM | YoY |
| Aerospace & Defense | 60.1% | 53.4% | 53.6% | 0.1% | -6.6% |
| Arts, Entertainment & Recreation | 47.3% | 40.2% | 40.5% | 0.2% | -6.8% |
| Construction, Repair & Maintenance Services | 60.9% | 55.3% | 55.6% | 0.4% | -5.3% |
| Education | 49.5% | 46.5% | 46.1% | -0.4% | -3.5% |
| Energy, Mining & Utilities | 59.2% | 54.5% | 53.0% | -1.4% | -6.2% |
| Financial Services | 56.3% | 49.7% | 48.9% | -0.7% | -7.4% |
| Government & Public Administration | 45.4% | 45.5% | 45.1% | -0.4% | -0.3% |
| Healthcare | 51.0% | 47.0% | 48.1% | 1.1% | -2.9% |
| Hotels & Travel Accommodation | 51.3% | 46.0% | 41.8% | -4.2% | -9.5% |
| Human Resources & Staffing | 64.4% | 53.1% | 52.5% | -0.6% | -11.9% |
| Information Technology | 56.0% | 50.7% | 50.2% | -0.4% | -5.8% |
| Insurance | 56.9% | 48.6% | 48.4% | -0.2% | -8.4% |
| Legal | 59.0% | 52.4% | 54.8% | 2.4% | -4.1% |
| Management & Consulting | 57.1% | 48.9% | 49.0% | 0.2% | -8.0% |
| Manufacturing | 50.4% | 44.8% | 44.0% | -0.7% | -6.3% |
| Media & Communication | 53.8% | 45.9% | 45.2% | -0.7% | -8.5% |
| Nonprofit & NGO | 50.6% | 47.9% | 46.7% | -1.2% | -3.9% |
| Personal Consumer Services | 45.3% | 36.1% | 37.0% | 0.9% | -8.3% |
| Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology | 48.3% | 41.1% | 38.6% | -2.5% | -9.7% |
| Real Estate | 59.4% | 54.2% | 51.1% | -3.1% | -8.3% |
| Restaurants & Food Service | 42.6% | 36.8% | 37.2% | 0.3% | -5.5% |
| Retail & Wholesale | 44.7% | 39.0% | 37.9% | -1.2% | -6.8% |
| Telecommunications | 52.0% | 41.3% | 40.9% | -0.4% | -11.1% |
| Transportation & Logistics | 52.2% | 43.2% | 43.0% | -0.2% | -9.3% |
Employee Confidence by Seniority
Employee confidence for entry-level workers dropped by 2.2 percentage points in March, down to 46.1%, marking the lowest level since our data begins in 2016. While layoffs have remained low across the economy, hiring has also slowed dramatically. Lower layoffs help preserve job security for already-employed workers, but the slowdown in hiring is also crimping opportunities for new grads to enter the workforce. Additionally, lower quit rates also mean entry-level workers have found it difficult to climb the career ladder, whether by stepping into a departing coworker’s role or by finding a better job elsewhere.
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 on the use of terms and phrases in Glassdoor reviews is not reweighted. Term usage is normalized by the total number of reviews in the month. The share of “overhiring” reviews is smoothed using a 3-month trailing average.
Data for March 2024 is current as of March 19, 2024. 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.
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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