According to Mercer surveys, job security jumped from the 10th most serious concern of American workers in 2021 to the second most pressing concern in 2025.
Job security surged to workers’ second-most important concern this year, after covering their monthly expenses, according to a recent survey by Mercer.
While “covering monthly expenses” had been the top issue for the previous three yearly surveys, concerns about losing one’s job rose from seventh position in 2023 to second place in 2025, where it was tied with work-life balance and the ability to retire. In 2024, Mercer did not carry out this poll.
The findings are the most recent indication of how workers’ personal feelings are becoming more independent of overall economic data. GDP rose 4.3% in the third quarter (prior to the government shutdown), according to data released on Tuesday. Even while economic growth is good, people don’t feel that way. Sean Connelly, Mercer’s U.S. & Canada total reward-preference research head, told MarketWatch, “It hurts when you go to the grocery store and you’re shocked at how much that bill is every time.”
The richest 10% of income earners now account for half of consumer expenditure, according to research earlier this year by Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics (MCO), despite an increase in overall consumer spending in the third quarter. Later, in October, Zandi revealed that 13 states are treading water and 22 states are experiencing a recession.
Workers “look at the economy, they look at their company, [and wonder], ‘Is my company going to be successful or not?'” as persistent inflation and market volatility contribute to a feeling of economic insecurity. Connelly went on. “We can definitely count on people continuing to feel the pressure of different macroeconomic issues” by 2026.
The day when anxieties about physical and mental health surpassed workers’ money concerns, as they did in Mercer’s 2021 study (when job security rated 10th and monthly expenses ranked ninth), are well behind us now. Since inflation increased, the labor market stagnated, and the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) threatened to change the way people work, financial concerns have progressively surpassed other concerns on employees’ lists of the top concerns. In September of this year, Mercer conducted a survey of over 4,500 employees in the United States.
With job creation heavily concentrated in the health sector, the U.S. jobless rate surged to a four-year high of 4.6% last month. According to a recent Conference Board survey, consumer perceptions of the labor market were “weaker in December,” which is consistent with this trend. According to the survey, more people now describe their family’s financial circumstances as “bad” than “good.”
Meanwhile, in the December report from the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, 63% of consumers said they expect unemployment to continue growing next year. The survey stated that “as pocketbook issues continue to dominate consumer views of the economy,” sentiment was over 30% lower than it was in December 2024.
