Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index: Concerns Remain After Layoffs
Daniel Zhao
Chief Economist at Glassdoor | Dec 6, 2023
Employee confidence ticked up ever so slightly in November, rising to 46.9 percent, according to the latest data from the Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index. The share of employees reporting a positive 6-month business outlook increased by half a percentage point, rising to its highest level since July. After dropping over much of the last year, the recent plateau in employee confidence hopefully points to a bottom in worker sentiment.
Despite the recent plateau, employee confidence remains low by historical standards in large part due to employee angst about layoffs earlier in 2023. Last month, we saw that discussions of layoffs are still rising even as discussions of recessions in Glassdoor reviews have waned. To explore further, we looked at reviews from employees with a negative business outlook and analyzed phrases that they use in the cons section of their reviews.
- As employees grapple with the aftermath of layoffs, employees are concerned about the impact on culture and their health as terms like “pressure”, “company culture”, “fear”, “morale” and “mental health” are rising.
- “Senior leadership”, “micromanagement” and “executives” are also increasingly discussed in the cons section of reviews as employees are dissatisfied with leadership.
- Terms around growth or job security have also been mentioned more over the last year as points of concern as employers pull back on budgets.
Despite relatively low rates of layoffs, Americans are still concerned about job security and their working conditions in a world where employers are tightening budgets and asking their workers to do more with less. In Glassdoor’s 2024 workplace trends report, we found the impact of layoffs on company culture are long-lasting, even many months after the layoff, providing more evidence for why employee confidence remains depressed in 2023.
Employee Confidence by Industry
- Leisure and hospitality saw the largest month-over-month increase in employee confidence, rising to 40.6 percent in November from 38.6 percent in October as resilient consumer spending buoys restaurants, hotels and other businesses in the industry despite fears that a recession this year would crimp spending.
- Employee outlook in construction rose 1.4 percentage points in November, up to 60 percent, the highest of the major industries we track. Despite the housing market seizing up as mortgage rates have increased, construction workers remain surprisingly optimistic, perhaps due to strong spending in non-residential construction.
- Tech continues to remain weak with employee confidence in the Information sector falling further to 47.9 percent, down 1.1 percentage points from October and a whopping 12.5 percent from last November. The tech industry continues to feel the ripple effects from the layoffs and hiring slowdown from earlier in 2023.
Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index by Industry
| Industry | Nov 2022 | Oct 2023 | Nov 2023 | MoM | YoY |
| Construction | 65.0% | 58.6% | 60.0% | 1.4% | -4.9% |
| Education and health services | 54.1% | 48.2% | 47.8% | -0.4% | -6.3% |
| Financial activities | 57.0% | 51.8% | 50.3% | -1.6% | -6.7% |
| Information | 60.4% | 49.1% | 47.9% | -1.1% | -12.5% |
| Leisure and hospitality | 46.7% | 38.8% | 40.6% | 1.8% | -6.1% |
| Manufacturing | 54.2% | 45.5% | 46.2% | 0.7% | -8.0% |
| Other services | 52.9% | 44.0% | 44.6% | 0.5% | -8.4% |
| Professional and business services | 62.9% | 53.0% | 53.6% | 0.6% | -9.3% |
| Public administration | 50.3% | 42.4% | 41.3% | -1.1% | -9.0% |
| Retail trade | 44.9% | 37.3% | 37.5% | 0.3% | -7.4% |
| Transportation and warehousing | 51.5% | 45.5% | 45.8% | 0.3% | -5.7% |
| Utilities | 61.3% | 56.8% | 55.3% | -1.5% | -5.9% |
| Wholesale trade | 56.5% | 48.2% | 49.6% | 1.4% | -6.9% |
Employee Confidence by Seniority
Employee confidence rebounded for senior employees in November, rising 2.6 percentage points month-over-month to 62.4 percent, recovering more than half of the drop from September to October. Employee confidence among senior employees has been volatile over the last few months, but stabilization among senior employees is particularly important as it informs upcoming growth and hiring plans, especially as 2023 comes to an end and leaders plan for the new year.
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.
Data for November 2023 is current as of November 27, 2023. 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.
Tags:Labor MarketUnemployment
