Even during the COVID outbreak, workers are feeling worse than they did before.
According to Glassdoor’s employee confidence index, which was measured through March, before President Donald Trump’s announcement of worldwide tariffs sent stock markets into a historic selloff, employee confidence, which has been falling since 2022, stayed close to February’s record low last month as recession fears increased.
In the report, Glassdoor Lead Economist Daniel Zhao stated, “Economic uncertainty remains a significant drag on the sentiment of workers as tariffs, federal funding and workforce cuts, and general business uncertainty disrupt investment and hiring plans.”
According to a Moody’s Analytics survey of business confidence conducted last week in response to Trump’s tariff announcement, sentiment among business executives also plummeted, marking the biggest drop since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.
Employees are concerned about what lies ahead. In Glassdoor users’ employer ratings, references to “layoffs” increased 4.2% annually, while monthly references to “recession,” which has been increasing since late 2024, increased 16%. “A lot of this comes back to job security and the concern that workers have if the economy were to weaken further,” Zhao stated to BourseWatch.
Last week, Goldman Sachs (GS) and JPMorgan (JPM) boosted the likelihood of a U.S. recession to 35% and 60%, respectively, with the prediction that it will begin in June. According to Chief Economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s (MCO), there is a 60% chance of a downturn. According to High Frequency Economics, the recession has already started, and “layoffs will surge.”
Since its launch in 2016, Glassdoor’s employee confidence index has tracked employees’ positive six-month business outlook for their employers. According to Zhao, last month’s biggest annual drops in confidence were reported by workers in government and government-adjacent companies, which were particularly affected by the DOGE funding cuts and layoffs. The confidence index among employees of nonprofits and non-governmental organizations fell by 4.6 percentage points, the government and public administration index fell by 6.6 percentage points, and the aerospace and defense index plummeted by 11 percentage points.
The effect from Trump’s tariff announcement may have caused even more of a shift in the morale of employees. Zhao stated that “a lot of news has broken in the last week since we collected this data” and that he will be monitoring the IT and manufacturing industries, which “rely heavily on global supply chains.” “There is an open question about what [the new tariffs] means for those businesses, and ultimately what that means for those workers,” he stated.
According to Glassdoor’s research, entry-level employees, who are frequently more vulnerable to layoffs during a recession, expressed record-low confidence last month. A sharp drop in confidence was also noticed by mid-level employees. Confidence among senior employees, however, declined more subtly.
According to Zhao, employee confidence seems to be the most consistent in the healthcare sector, which includes positions in a variety of professions (such as information technology).
In the past, economists told MarketWatch that a slowdown in the economy brought on by tariffs would probably affect young workers, low-wage workers, those employed in manufacturing and construction, and rural economies the most.
Many economists are concerned that the Trump administration’s massive tariff plan will cause prices to rise and the economy to slow down, a scenario known as “stagflation.” For consumers, especially low-wage workers who were already overburdened by inflation and are more susceptible to job loss, it is an extraordinarily challenging set of circumstances.
Because employers may fire newer employees first during times of business weakness and because the average pay increase workers receive from changing jobs has drastically decreased compared to a few years ago, financial experts told MarketWatch that workers may benefit from staying put at their employers during an economic downturn.
According to Zhao, “uncertainty is a big theme for 2025,” even though the unemployment rate in March was still a low 4.2%. “The hiring rate is very sluggish, so you have workers who might be grateful that they’re still employed in this uncertain economic environment, but they might not be happy if they feel like they’re not making progress in their careers or they’re not getting the raises that they want to,” he said. “There’s a difference between a stable job market and a healthy job market.”
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