Fewer than three in 10 U.S. employees were engaged at work in the third quarter of 2026, the lowest level Gallup has recorded since 2011.
Gallup's 29% engagement figure was down two percentage points from the second quarter. Another 18% of workers were actively disengaged, up from 17%, while 53% were not engaged.
Engagement peaked at 36% in 2020. Gallup reported 31% in 2024 and the first half of 2026, putting the latest decline within a longer retreat from the pandemic-era high.
Gallup estimates that each percentage point represents roughly 1.6 million workers. By that measure, the quarterly change translates to about 3.2 million fewer engaged employees, and the decline since 2020 to roughly 11 million.
Expectations and personal support weaken
The share of employees who strongly agreed that they knew what was expected of them fell from 49% in the first half of the year to 46% in the third quarter.
The share who strongly agreed that someone at work cared about them as a person declined from 40% to 37%. That measure reached 47% in March 2020, according to Gallup.
Fully remote workers' engagement fell five points during the quarter, compared with two points among hybrid workers and about one point among on-site workers.
Gallup said the remote and hybrid changes exceeded the survey's margin of error; the on-site changes did not. The results describe associations between work arrangements and engagement, rather than proving that working remotely caused the decline.
Earlier Gallup research found that declines in clarity about expectations between 2020 and 2023 were roughly twice as large among remote and hybrid employees as among on-site employees in jobs that could be done remotely.
AI adoption offers an uneven advantage
Gallup's earlier July analysis found higher engagement at organizations adopting AI, particularly when employees understood the plan and received active support from managers.
Employees who frequently used AI, understood their organization's plan and felt supported by managers had a 53% engagement rate in that analysis. The findings do not establish that AI use alone produced the difference.
By the third quarter, the engagement advantage associated with AI adoption among remote and hybrid employees had narrowed to two points, down from five and eight points, respectively, in the second quarter. An advantage of roughly four to five points remained among on-site employees.
Gallup recommends setting expectations for how AI applies to particular jobs and how work will be evaluated. It also urges managers to support employees, track practical outcomes such as productivity and creative problem-solving, and share useful examples.
The findings come from Gallup's quarterly workforce research. Its Aug. 5-19 probability-based Gallup Panel web survey included 21,648 U.S. adults; the full-sample margin of error was about one percentage point at the 95% confidence level. Subgroup estimates have greater uncertainty.
The results were weighted to population characteristics including age, gender, race and ethnicity, education, party identification and region. They are national findings, not a separate measure of New York workers.
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