Americans across the country are feeling quite a bit of stress these days, according to results from the 2024 Stress in America survey conducted by the American Psychological Association (APA). Though the most impactful stressors involved outcomes from the election season, the economy was a close second — 73% of adults labeled it as “a significant source of stress.” Similarly, 65% of adults noted worry about housing costs when asked about societal stressors.1 But whether or not it's the economy that worries you, stress can have a major impact on your daily life, including in the workplace.
Workplace stress has been linked to an increased risk of health concerns like hypertension, diabetes, back problems, sleep deprivation, or even infertility.2 These stressors don’t only have to occur in the office; they can also be caused by the impacts your job has on your personal life, such as a lack of flexibility to care for children or older family members.
To learn more about who in America is struggling the most with workplace stress and why, we conducted a study using federal data, broke the information down into weighted categories, and analyzed the state-by-state results.
According to Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace report, employees worldwide are struggling at work. Some interesting data points include:3
Interestingly — despite these negative statistics — 54% of employees also stated that they believe it’s “a good time to find a job” in their place of residence.3 However, this is global data; it’s not just based on the United States. So, what do Americans think about their work?
A 2024 Pew Research Center report found that half of U.S. workers are either extremely or very satisfied with their jobs overall. However, 80% of respondents reported that their pay has not kept up with increases in the cost of living, 71% felt their pay didn’t match the quality of their work, and 70% said the pay was too low for the amount of work they do. These complaints were from men and women equally, though the latter did feel more often that they were paid less than co-workers who do the same type of work.4
But besides economic stress, what else creates a stressful work environment for employees? And do these factors vary by region or individual state?
To determine how stressful (or not) a given state is to work in, we gathered relevant data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Right to Work Legal Defense and Education Foundation, The United States Census Bureau, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). With this information, we created a ranking system that divided the most relevant factors contributing to a stressful working environment into four categories: employment-related stress, income-related stress, commuting-related stress, and sleep-related stress.
The determining factors for each of these four stress categories include:
The average number of hours worked per week, statewide unemployment rates, and whether or not a state has Right to Work laws.
The average income growth rate, average hourly earnings, and average weekly earnings.
The number of adults who report walking or biking to work, how many adults work from home, and the average time it takes to get to work.
The proportion of adults in a state who report short sleep duration.
Using this information, we scored the individual aspects of each category, where a lower score indicated a relatively higher stress level. The state with the lowest combined score was determined to be where people feel the most stressed out (and vice versa for the least stressed).
Based on the results of our data analysis, the South is a particularly stressful place for workers. A majority of the top ten most stressful U.S. states to work in are located in the southern half of the country, including:
Most of the states on this year’s top ten list aren’t new; they were also on the same list last year, namely Nevada, Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, and Indiana. However, when it comes to newcomers as we analyzed fresh data, the most striking is perhaps Georgia, which shot all the way up from 18th last time to claim the 1st place trophy as the most stressful state to work in. Along with Georgia, the other new entries to the top ten list are New Jersey and Kentucky, which replaced Louisiana, North Carolina, and Oklahoma.
Interestingly, Nevada is the only state in the top ten most stressful list that’s not near the East Coast, and it has some of the least stressful states nearby. Nevada’s northwest neighbor, Oregon, for example, came in at 49th place — or as the second least stressful state. Utah (35th place), California (32nd), and Idaho (31st) also ranked pretty well for low-stress working conditions.
Speaking of the least stressful U.S. states to work in, here are the ten best states right now for low workplace stress:
Unlike the most stressful states, which are mainly concentrated in one part of the country, the least stressful states are more spread out. While many low-stress states are in the Upper Midwest, there are also some in the Pacific Northwest and in New England. One thing these states do share, though, is being farther north.
Earlier, we mentioned breaking down work-related stressors into four distinct categories. These include employment-, income-, commuting-, and sleep-related stress. While the cumulative scores determined our overall rankings, it’s also interesting to take a look at which states scored the highest in each specific category — especially since the results can be a bit surprising.
Photo by Innerbody Research
Our employment-related stress ranking utilized national data on the average hours worked per week, statewide unemployment rates, and whether a given state is considered “at-will” or “right-to-work.” The top five states with the highest employment-related stress are:
Interestingly, Kentucky (8th overall for workplace stress) is the only state on the above list that also made the top ten most stressful states to work in. However, it’s worth pointing out that Georgia (1st overall) came in 6th for employment-related stress, and both Louisiana and Ohio are ranked 11th and 12th on the overall most stressful list. So, when you take a look at the bigger picture, the rankings aren’t all that surprising.
You might think job security would be a significant factor in determining the work-related stress level of a given state, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Four out of five of the states in the above list — minus Ohio — are designated as “right-to-work” states,5 which means employees are allowed to work for unionized employers without joining the union (as opposed to “at-will” employment,6 which means you can get laid off or fired at any time for almost any reason that isn’t unlawful).7
Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that eight out of the ten least stressful states to work in are not right-to-work states. The only two that do have those laws are South Dakota (7th least stressful) and Wyoming (9th least stressful).5
To determine each state’s income-related stress, we evaluated their average hourly earnings, average weekly earnings, and income growth rate. The top five states with the most income-related stress include:
Three of the top ten most stressful states to work in — Nevada (3rd), Arkansas (9th), and Georgia (1st) — are also some of the top five states with the most income-related stress. And Montana (43rd) is actually one of the least stressful states to work in, but its ranking is apparently due to the state’s low employment-, commuting-, and sleep-related stress levels, because its citizens certainly seem worried about their income.
Though inflation has steadily lowered since it reached a peak in 2021, prices have continued to rise.8 From 2020 to 2024, prices for food rose 23.6%, the cost of housing increased by 23%, and transportation prices went up by over 34%, according to a 2025 report from the USDA.9 Moreover, as we touched on earlier, Americans feel like their paychecks aren’t enough to cover the increasing costs of living.4
From our data analysis, we found that two of the states in the top five list above — Georgia and Nevada — actually saw a decrease in their average weekly earnings and income growth rate. While Georgia had a 0.52% decrease, Nevada saw a nearly 5% decrease, taking the average weekly earnings from $903 (in 2023) down to $861 (in 2024) — or $42 less. As living becomes more expensive, a decreased paycheck can certainly lead to additional income-related stress.
In comparison, Alaska, Hawaii, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, and South Dakota all saw income growth rates of over 10% between 2023 and 2024. The highest increase was seen in Oregon, with a 14.54% growth rate, which brought average weekly earnings up from $1,018 to $1,166 — an increase of $148.
Our ratings for commuting-related stress are based on the percentage of adults who usually bike or walk to work, the percentage of adults working from home, and the average time spent commuting to work. The most stressful states for commuting are:
If you’re able to walk or bike to work, this likely means that your place of employment isn’t too terribly far away. Being able to commute on foot or by bike not only allows you to avoid the stress of rush hour, but the exercise can also help you manage or reduce your stress.10 The five states in the list above all have some of the lowest percentages of people commuting on foot or by bicycle. Alabama, Tennessee, and Texas are the bottom three, but Georgia and Florida aren’t too far behind.
Now, if you work from home, then you can avoid commuting-related stress entirely. Interestingly, out of the aforementioned top five, only Alabama has a percentage of work-from-home employees lower than 10%. The remaining states in the above list all have percentages over 12% at the lowest, with Florida coming in at 15.8% (or 12th place overall out of all 50 states).
Finally, when it comes to commuting to work, Georgia and Florida both have some of the highest average times at 28-29 minutes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, states like New York and California have higher commuting times. Nonetheless, all of the states in the top five list above have work transportation times over 25 minutes. According to research from 2024, longer commute times — which can lead to mental fatigue — may contribute to feelings of mental burnout and impair daily job performance.11
Unlike the previous categories, our sleep-related stress analysis kept only one important factor in mind: the proportion of adults experiencing a short sleep duration. According to data obtained from the CDC, the top five states experiencing the worst sleep include:
It’s no secret that sleep can have a massive impact on your daily life. The quality of your nightly rest can have far-reaching effects on both your mental and physical health, from learning, attention, and problem-solving to insulin response, immunity, heart health, and more.12
A lack of sleep can also lead to a vicious cycle: sleep deprivation can increase stress, and stress can lead to trouble sleeping.13 Along with negative health effects, that same stress can also increase absenteeism, reduce initiative, and diminish work performance.14
If you’re curious about how the other states fared — like your own, if it wasn’t already mentioned — we’ve compiled a table depicting the rankings for all 50 states, both overall and by category.
Throughout our analysis of the various data points, we noticed a number of interesting details, including:
The top ten most stressful jobs in the U.S. as of February 2025 include:24
When you compare the jobs on the list above to employment levels in the states with the most employment-related stress (Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, and Ohio), some of them do match up. For example:
However, it’s important to point out that the most likely reason for Texas having so many employees in these jobs is because the state has the second-highest population in the country. The other highest-population states — California, Florida, and New York — also frequently appeared as places with the highest or second-highest number of people employed in jobs from the most-stressful list.28 So, while there may be some data suggesting that the states with more stressful work environments have more employees in the most high-stress jobs, it’s not necessarily the main driver of the stress or the sole reason for it.
According to a 2024 Gallup report, American adults are more stressed now than they were 30 years ago. After a drop in stress in 2003, the number of stressed Americans has been on a steady incline, with 49% reporting frequent stress in 2023. (For comparison, the rate was 44% in 2017 and 40% in 2007.)18
Needless to say, lowering stress levels where possible could potentially bring people some major relief. In this section, we’ll go over some ways to reduce stress in the workplace.
The American Psychological Association (APA) and Harvard Business Review both offer some tips for employees to manage or recover from workplace stress. These methods include:19 20
However, if life feels too overwhelming, consider seeking guidance from a mental health professional or contacting a crisis line:
According to the results of a 2021 APA study, 87% of employees feel that actions from their employer would help improve their mental health.22 Though most resources available are for employees, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of the U.S. Department of Labor hosts a page with guidance on how employers can reduce workplace stress.
Some key actions employers can take include:23
For more information and resources on workplace stress, the OSHA Workplace Stress hub also provides guides, checklists, fact sheets, posters, and more for both employers and employees.
We created a metadata-ranking system to determine the most and least stressful states in which to work within the United States. We based our rankings on four major categories: employment-related stress, income-related stress, commuting-related stress, and sleep-related stress. Then, we scored the individual aspects of each category (a lower score indicating a relatively higher level of stress), and the state with the lowest combined score (on a scale of 1 to 50) was determined to be the most stressful state. We also totaled up the scores to determine which state did the worst or best in each category.
Innerbody Research is committed to providing objective, science-based suggestions and research to help our readers make more informed decisions regarding health and wellness. We invested the time and effort into creating this report to explore which states had “better” or “worse” conditions for employment (e.g., which states were the most or least stressful to work in). We hope to reach as many people as possible by making this information widely available. As such, please feel free to share our content for educational, editorial, or discussion purposes. We only ask that you link back to this page and credit the author as Innerbody.com.
Sources
Innerbody uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
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American Psychological Association. (2021). The American workforce faces compounding pressure. APA.
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