Job Security, AI, Personal Finances, and the Economy Top List of Stressors for American Workers

(Photo : Tim van der Kuip on Unsplash)

While you probably thought the pandemic put your stress levels through their paces, it turns out 2023 was even more stressful for American workers for a variety of reasons, including mass layoffs, the cost-of-living crisis, and crippling inflation.

That's according to a recent report which has found that 64% of U.S. employees are more stressed this year than in previous years, with 25% sharing that their stress levels are "much higher."

The study also uncovered that women are more stressed than their male counterparts, and those aged 45 to 60 reported much higher stress than their millennial colleagues.

However, those at the start of their careers who are part of the Gen Z cohort are also vulnerable when it comes to workplace stress, with 49% reporting higher stress levels in 2023.

Stress Factors

While inflation thankfully steadied somewhat as of October 2023 compared to the dizzying heights of 9.1% in June 2022, prices were 3.2% higher, meaning salaries still aren't going as far as they used to.

Aside from personal finances, job security prevails as a main point of contention, with many workers fearing that advances in AI and automation could result in their jobs being replaced by robots.

This is despite the fact that only 2% of jobs have been replaced by AI.

Moving Forward

So, what can those on the brink of burnout do to alleviate these stressors?

While talk therapy is one way to deal with stress and anxiety, 26% of workers are wary of therapy and don't believe it would be helpful. A further 17% don't have the time to commit to therapy, 7% don't want to be judged, and 3% believe therapy is a sign of weakness.

Aside from self-care, there are a number of professional tactics you can deploy to enhance your earning power and job security, including brushing up on your soft skills.

According to the World Economic Forum's recent Future of Jobs 2023 report, competencies including critical thinking, problem-solving, empathy, and communication will be some of the most in-demand skills by 2027.

That said, you should also consider how you can enhance your core skills, particularly in relation to AI, and how you can adopt automation into your current role—a study from Goldman Sachs predicts that generative AI tools could impact as many as 300 million full-time jobs worldwide over ten years.

However, sometimes, the only viable way to reinvigorate your career is by looking for a new job in a company that is actively adding to its workforce. If you do find yourself in this position, the Science + Nature Job Board is the perfect place to focus your search, or in the meantime, check out the three roles hiring right now.

Senior ASIC Design Engineer, NVIDIA, Santa Clara

The Clocks group at NVIDIA is looking for a Senior ASIC Design Engineer to join its team. In this role, you will be responsible for crafting all aspects of SOC clocking. The team collaborates with the front-end design team to understand the clocking requirements for the chip, interacts with the floor-planning and back-end teams to help craft the physical floor plan of the chip, and explains the programming model to the SW team to come up with an efficient clock-programming sequence. The team also works with the silicon solution team to triage silicon or programming bugs in the lab. View additional details here.

ATT&CK Cyber Threat Intelligence Task Lead, The MITRE Corporation, McLean

MITRE is a not-for-profit corporation chartered to work for the public interest, with no commercial conflicts and works across the fields of cybersecurity, healthcare, aviation, defense, and enterprise transformation. As a MITRE Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge (ATT&CK) Cyber Threat Intelligence Task Lead, you will lead the ATT&CK CTI team and manage the budget, ensuring quality and delivery to the ATT&CK Project Lead, and setting and executing the vision for ATT&CK's Cyber Threat Intelligence work. You will also set the vision and strategy for the team and identify opportunities for improvements. See the full job description here.

Software Engineer, Lead, Booz Allen Hamilton, McLean

As a Software Engineer at Booz Allen, you will support the design, development, and continuous engineering of an Enterprise Data Platform that enables application and AI/ML development activities. You will design and deploy a Developer Portal that facilitates the onboarding of data engineers, allowing them to discover existing data sources and provision, develop, and monitor new data pipelines and products, including visualizations and reports. You will build test automation to validate new features within the Enterprise Platform prior to rolling them out to end users and support the deployment of bug fixes and security patches. Interested? Apply now.