The résumé sits unfinished in a Google Doc. The LinkedIn tab stays open, untouched. For millions of American workers, the search for something better has ground to a halt — not because the jobs aren’t there, but because they’ve done the math. The door, it turns out, is barely open.
More than half of U.S. workers — 53%, according to a new Glassdoor poll of over 1,300 professionals — say they have paused their job search entirely to protect their mental health. It’s a figure that captures something economists rarely quantify: the exhaustion tax. The psychic cost of a labor market that demands constant hustle while delivering, for many, almost nothing in return.
