U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, new Gallup report finds

Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by kilroy123 on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:13PM (#27519304)

Oh course it is. It's fight like hell not to drown.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by encoderer on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @03:08PM (#27520059)

I come from a lower-middle-class family in a decayed rustbelt city and this was never my experience. It's a big country and some places have it harder than others but I thought I'd add a counterpoint to what I honestly read as a pretty pessimistic take.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by kilroy123 on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @06:15PM (#27522242)

Then I would say you're very lucky. My entire family in California absolutely feels this way. Not everyone can be in tech.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by dcolkitt on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:54PM (#27519860)

The study found that the US and Canada had virtually identical stress levels. Therefore I doubt the healthcare system is the driving factor.

Also considering that the least stressed country was Russia, I don’t think that wealth inequality or the lack of a middle class is a major driver either.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by guerrilla on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:12PM (#27519285)

I'd add the general lack of a social safety net, at least compared to Europe. All those people can actually become homeless.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by SmellTheGlove on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:15PM (#27519335)

Sorry, I edited in that bit just now. But yeah, I agree with you. Hell, I work in tech and do okay, and yet the thought crosses my mind that things could go off the rails quickly. If I get sick, even my relatively good insurance means lots of out of pocket costs. Plus I can't work then, so I'll live on a fraction of my income since I have decent disability coverage. I'll be able to keep a roof over my head, but probably not a lot beyond that, which negatively affects my family - particularly my child, given skyrocketing education costs.

It's a weird place when you think about it. And yet most days I accept this as normal.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by necrotic_comp on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:19PM (#27519398)

yep - I second this. There's definitely a lurking thought about what'd happen if you're sick they find something or what happens if your landlord decides he doesn't want to rent your apartment any more, and now you have to move to a new neighborhood that's 30 minutes further away from work and less safe, or, god forbid if I had kids, in a worse district, etc. etc.

I've been working at a high level for 15 years now and I feel like I'm just barely making it out of the swamp. I have no psychological safety because a single bad decision or an incident of bad luck could completely derail my life.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by wolverine876 on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @03:55PM (#27520655)

> And yet most days I accept this as normal.

That is not a symptom, but the problem. People can normalize anything. You could normalize living like a medieval peasant - many people did. Smart people know they can just keep doing something and eventually others will accept it to a degree.

You deserve better.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by throwkeep on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:20PM (#27519410)

Don't most US cities have social services that provide shelter, food and other assistance?

[How nice that this is getting downvoted. It's a legit question. I have family members who are social workers and know these services exist, and it seems like it's most cities, but don't know for sure, hence the question mark.]

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by dragontamer on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:23PM (#27519451)

Its hard enough to convince a friend to take unemployment checks, let alone go to a shelter or pull out a food-stamp debit card.

There's a toxic culture in the USA that looks down upon welfare. For those people, welfare doesn't exist, even if they find themselves in that environment. And since they've convinced themselves that they'll never take welfare, they expect others to follow by their own rules.

This culture leads to a particular anti-welfare voting pattern.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by MisterBastahrd on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @05:56PM (#27522023)

You say that, but as someone from bright red Louisiana, you will find that the loudest anti-welfare ranters are the same people who are first in line for every government handout after a natural disaster.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by throwkeep on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @05:58PM (#27522051)

The loudest "anti" voices tend to be those who engage in the very thing they advocate against. It's so common there must be a term in psychology for it.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by quintushoratius on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @08:58PM (#27523662)

There is. It's called "projection."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by reidjs on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:24PM (#27519471)

True, but in many ways I am more afraid of living in a shelter than on the street, or more realistically, in my car. In your car at least you have some sense of ownership, safety, and personal space. In a shelter you are potentially surrounded by mentally ill unstable drug addicts. It makes sense that many people refuse to use shelters.

This is coming from someone who has never lived in a shelter, so I may be wrong, but it's definitely my fear and a source of motivation when working not-great jobs.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by pault on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:28PM (#27519521)

If you mean homeless shelters, yes, but they're horrible and most homeless (or underhoused) people would rather live in a tent than go there. The justifications given are usually assault, thievery, and not being able to bring any personal possessions. I can understand why someone wouldn't want to stay in a shelter if it meant leaving all of their belongings unattended (if you're homeless you probably don't have a storage space or a friend's garage).

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by kelnos on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:25PM (#27519481)

Most of them are overcrowded and often over capacity. People wait in line before they open and are sometimes turned away when they're full.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by ranma4703 on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:25PM (#27519487)

Most US cities have a policy of buying homeless people one way tickets to another city, and if they do provide homeless shelters, they are often full, underfunded, and have issues that make using them difficult

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by belatw on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @03:09PM (#27520070)

This is only partially true. There is no “policy” aim any city do do this.

What does happen is that charity groups like catholic churches or st vincent de paul will buy homeless and runaways one-way tickets, but only if they have a verifiable destination.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by ranma4703 on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @03:22PM (#27520228)

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvg7ba/instead-of-helping-ho...

has examples of several cities that do this, not just charity groups

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by goat_whisperer on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:44PM (#27519739)

lol

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by viro on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @03:25PM (#27520265)

You might want to look up the homeless rates in the EU...

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by dougmwne on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @03:49PM (#27520569)

I just did and it seems generally lower than the USA in quite a few countries. When you look state by state and country by country it becomes clear it's highly localized to certain urban areas. Plus there seems to be a difference in reporting (Germany for instance counts hundreds of thousands of asylum seeking refugees).

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by foobarian on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:53PM (#27519846)

Is anyone really that surprised? The United States were built exactly by the folks who wanted to opt out of the overbearing, coddling European system, and it shows.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by lordnacho on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @03:01PM (#27519957)

But that European system was built long after the US became independent?

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by gambiting on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @03:07PM (#27520031)

Yeah. The truth is literally the exact opposite of what they said - early puritan settlers left for America specifically because they wanted to be controlling and overbearing and the European states they set off from were less and less welcoming to this kind of thing.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by foobarian on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @03:25PM (#27520261)

Perhaps. I contend that the main waves of immigration in the 18-20th centuries consisted of opportunists well above average.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by foobarian on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @03:23PM (#27520245)

There is more to it than the post-war social-democratic systems in Western Europe. Going back centuries there was never a way to up and move to an uncontrolled space and start anew like on the American continent. The entire European continent was under tight control by whatever authority there was whether church or feudal, with restrictions on movement, residence, and labor.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by ajmadesc on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @03:07PM (#27520044)

But Americans aren't educated outside of stem

> And it shows

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by viro on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @03:29PM (#27520308)

what's the homeless rate in Sweden ? Netherlands? France? I'll leave out Germany since thats a little unfair.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by dougmwne on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @03:54PM (#27520645)

That does not even seem close to being true. I think more accurately it was a reaction against an established aristocratic and monarchial system that wouldn't share power with a new growing colonial upper class. Don't think the English were codling the peasants much back then.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by foobarian on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @04:18PM (#27520950)

Ok, overbearing before WW2, coddling after, then? :-) Either way the effect was to drive the more ambitious layer out which I think seeded a very skewed culture relative to their origin.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by dilyevsky on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:36PM (#27519621)

If you think us housing is skyrocketing wait until you see european prices

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by CobrastanJorji on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @04:16PM (#27520931)

If I lose my job in Europe, I have trouble paying for my home. If I lose my job in America, I can no longer get prescription medicine to keep myself alive.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by sneak on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:40PM (#27519676)

Wages are no longer stagnant, though they were until about a year ago.

Presently we have seen 4 consecutive quarters of substantial y/y wage growth in the US.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by rch on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @02:58PM (#27519910)

I was curious about median wage growth and found graph of the ratio of median to average:

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by ajmadesc on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @03:06PM (#27520022)

Is that adjusted for rise in costs?

What counts as substantial?

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by sneak on Tuesday June 15, 2021 @04:40PM (#27521214)

It's not adjusted for anything, just in actual figures.

Per a blog I read:

Q1 2021 wages were 7.7% higher than Q1 2020 wages.

Q4 2020 wages were 7.7% higher than Q4 2019 wages.

Q3 2020 wages were 6.2% higher than Q3 2019 wages.

Q2 2020 wages were 6.5% higher than Q2 2019 wages.

It remains to be seen how bad the general consumer goods price increases will end up being.

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Re:U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, ne... by ajmadesc on Wednesday June 16, 2021 @02:36AM (#27525541)

Oh cool! Much more than I would've suspected. Thanks for sharing

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