PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2025
Workers are weighing in on the hotly debated question of AI’s impact on productivity, growth, and jobs. PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2025 indicates AI’s impact is growing and that optimism about its potential greatly outweighs anxiety. But our study—one of the world’s largest, with nearly 50,000 respondents spanning 28 sectors in 48 major economies—also shows daily usage is still relatively low and that leaders have big opportunities to unleash motivation and accelerate reinvention and growth.
of workers across all industries have used AI in the last 12 months.
of employees are using GenAI tools daily at work.
PwC leaders—including Pete Brown, Global Workforce Leader—summarise the key findings from this year’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey, featuring insights on AI, trust in the workplace, and the power of motivation.
of consumer markets (CM) workers say they’ve found a meaningful career. Among all workers, 56% say the same.
of CM workers say their manager supports them in building new skills. That’s lower than the 57% of workers across all industries who say the same.
Hear from Sabine Durand Hayes—Global Consumer Markets Leader, PwC France—on creating agency, purpose, and teamwork.
of energy, utilities, and resources (EUR) employees say they believe in their organisation’s long-term goals and objectives.
of EUR employees expect climate change to affect their job in the next three years—more than the average of workers across all industries.
Hear from Jeroen van Hoof—Global Energy, Utilities & Resources Leader, PwC Netherlands—on attracting talent through strong employee value propositions.
of financial services (FS) workers are confident that AI will increase their job security over the next three years. Just 38% of workers across all industries said the same.
of FS workers have learned new skills at work in the last year that are helping their career—6% higher than the global average.
Mat Falconer—Global Financial Services Leader, PwC UK—says now is the time to channel employee optimism.
of government employees are using GenAI daily at work, compared with 14% of workers across all industries.
of government workers say their work makes a difference in the world. That’s 8 points higher than the global average.
Listen to Randa Bahsoun—Government & Public Sector Labour and Social Development Leader, PwC Middle East—discuss the value of upskilling in fuelling AI adoption.
of health industries workers have a strong sense of purpose. That’s 12 points higher than the global average in saying their work makes a positive contribution.
of health industries workers have used AI at work in the past 12 months, compared with 54% of the global average.
Anthony Bruce, Global Health Industries Leader, PwC UK, advises health leaders to use technology to improve patient experience:
"To capitalise on AI, leaders at health providers and pharmaceutical firms need to tell a clearer story to their workforce about how the technology can improve patient outcomes. Leaders should also put clear guardrails in place to ensure that patient data and privacy remain paramount."
of workers in industrials and services (I&S) are excited about AI.
of I&S workers say their day-to-day work aligns to their organisation’s objectives, slightly higher than the global average.
Paul Harvey—Global Industrials & Services Industry Executive, PwC UK—explains how a workforce curious about AI can help drive business model reinvention.
of private equity (PE) workers who’ve used AI on the job in the past year are using it daily at work—that’s more than twice the global average.
of PE workers feel satisfied at work several times a week, compared with 64% across all industries. They’re also more inspired and excited, and less fatigued.
Hear Eric Janson—Global Private Equity & Principal Investors Leader, PwC US—explain how to turn AI enthusiasm into lasting energy and engagement.
of technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) employees who have used AI in the last 12 months use GenAI tools daily at work. Globally, 25% of workers report they’ve used AI in the last year.
of TMT workers are confident that they’ll be able to control how technology will affect their work in the next three years. Just 40% of workers across all industries say the same.
Will Barkway—Global TMT Workforce Leader, PwC UK—shares how leaders can tap into employee enthusiasm.
Across our survey sample, which extends from senior management to the front line, 54% of workers say they’ve used AI for their jobs in the past year. Most of these users are already seeing the benefits: about three-quarters say AI is increasing productivity and enhancing the quality of their work. Those who turn to generative AI (GenAI) daily are the most bullish: nine in 10 of these power users say they’ve not only experienced such improvements, but they also expect to see further advantages. Across our entire sample, workers are twice as likely to be curious or excited about AI’s impact on their work as they are to be worried or confused.
But this is no time for complacency. Despite the growing awareness of AI’s potential, only 14% of workers say they use GenAI daily. Usage varies according to work type: 19% of office employees report using GenAI daily, compared to 5% among manual workers. But the average shows only a small increase on the 12% we reported in 2024 and is significantly lower than estimates we often hear from global executives.
An even smaller group—just 6%—report daily use of agentic AI, the next phase of GenAI in which intelligent systems can autonomously take on distinct tasks, including decision-making. Across the workforce, fewer than half expect technology change will significantly impact their jobs over the next three years, seeing it as no more disruptive than shifts in customer preferences or government regulations. By contrast, 70% of daily GenAI users expect major job impacts from the technology.
For employers, these findings are a stark reminder that they can and should do more to help workers understand, adopt, and embrace AI’s transformative power. Employers may need to pay special attention to entry-level workers, nearly a third of whom say they’re worried to a large or very large extent about AI’s impact on their future, even as they’re also curious (47%) and optimistic (38%) about its long-term societal effects.
Uncertainty about AI’s effects is exacerbating the stark reality that many employees are feeling overwhelmed. While 70% of our survey respondents say they feel satisfied with their work at least once a week (including 22% who feel satisfied daily), there are also signs of stress. More than half are dealing with financial strain, and nearly as many say they’re fatigued. This heightens the need for employers to cultivate trust, alignment, and a sense of safety in the workforce. We’ve said this before, and this year’s survey only reinforces the message: these aren’t passing concerns but are ongoing priorities employers can’t afford to ignore.
New to our survey this year: the use of advanced statistical methods to explore motivation—the fuel for innovation, reinvention, and growth. We find there are big payoffs in motivation when workplaces build trust, nurture skills, and offer meaningful work, strategic alignment, and psychological safety. Taken together, these findings suggest leaders should try to co-create the future with their people. They also highlight six key actions that can help leaders get started:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, job security, and—even more than that—optimism about the future of their roles, are top motivators for workers. But today’s uncertain environment represents a challenge for management, given the scale of disruption. Step one: acknowledge the uncertainty.
Workers seem realistic about the business climate they face: only 53% feel strongly optimistic about the future of their roles, with non-managers (43%) trailing far behind executives (72%). Industries are at different stages of adopting AI and translating it into productivity gains, so it’s hardly surprising that workers’ attitudes vary accordingly: our survey found greater optimism in the technology and banking sectors, for example, and less among retail employees.
Uncertainty is especially acute when it comes to the hotly debated question of AI’s impact on entry-level jobs. Recent research by Stanford University’s Erik Brynjolfsson shows a decline in entry-level jobs in fields most exposed to AI automation—such as software developers and customer service representatives—but an increase in occupations augmented by the technology.
Managers responding to our survey are also coming to terms with the entry-level outlook, with 38% believing the technology will reduce such jobs, 30% saying it will increase them, and 28% expecting little effect. These numbers are relatively consistent across some job categories, with managers in office-based roles only slightly more likely (40%) than all managerial workers to expect AI to reduce entry-level jobs. We did see a difference in other job types, with about 30% of managers performing manual work expecting to see reductions in entry-level roles due to AI.
A point of hope from our data—one executives might emphasise in communications with their teams—is that uncertainty about AI’s overall impact need not equate with a loss of control over the role of the technology in their work. Nearly 70% of employees believe they have a large or moderate amount of control over the way technology will affect their work during the next three years, while only 10% say they have no control. Younger workers are even more bullish about their capacity to bend fast-evolving technology to their own career goals.
Leaders need to acknowledge the limitations of their foresight and the scale of the technological forces at work. Openness won’t create security, but it can pave the way for shared understanding and solutions. These issues are particularly acute with respect to entry-level workers. For companies hiring university students, the opportunity starts with being explicit during recruiting events about which entry-level needs are clear and which remain uncertain.
An example of such transparency came from an engineering student we spoke with recently who had entered university terrified that "AI would make me and everyone else unemployable," but came away from a career fair reassured by the openness of some recruiters: "They didn’t sugarcoat the impact of AI or the potential for their recruiting needs to change. But they also said AI was making their new hires dramatically more productive—it was a real multiplier for them—and that they were excited about their potential for growth." The student’s comments echo the sentiments of many younger workers in our survey whose responses reflect a similar combination of heightened anxiety and greater excitement about AI’s impact on their careers.
Once new hires start, companies should be tapping into their status as digital natives with AI knowledge and experience gained from school: "How can we use their experience to unlock the transformation we need across the board?" an executive we know recently asked. We’d suggest asking your entry-level workers, which itself will require an admission that we’re all leading through uncertainty.
Trust in management is critical for motivation, but it’s uneven across the workforce. When employees doubt their leaders, energy and focus drain away. And as organisations race to integrate AI and other new technologies, anxiety and uncertainty among workers is spiking. In a turbulent job market, where churn is high and employees may feel vulnerable, trust in leadership can become a critical stabiliser.
Workers who trust their direct managers the most are 72% more motivated (based on factors such as employees’ pride in their jobs, willingness to go above and beyond, and how much they looked forward to going to work) than those with the lowest levels of trust. Likewise, workers with the highest amount of trust in top management are 63% more motivated than those who trust senior leaders the least.
But for most organisations, there’s much work to do in building trust: barely half of our survey respondents say they trust top management. Employees put more faith in their direct managers than executives: 58% say they trust their direct manager and can speak openly with them. Trust in management is notably higher in the sectors moving fastest to integrate AI into work, such as technology and banking.
Trust grows from reliability. Workers need to see leaders doing what they say they’ll do, but just 55% say this is true of their direct managers today, and only 50% say their top management lives up to this maxim. There’s also room for improvement in two other drivers of trust—leaders’ care for workers’ well-being and employees’ comfort in speaking openly with their managers. The latter is a particularly acute issue among younger workers, who report less comfort about speaking openly with managers than older cohorts.
If workers are to make greater use of AI to improve productivity, creativity, and quality, leaders will also need to strengthen trust in the technology itself. As our ‘Value in motion’ research shows, trust-based AI strategies encompassing responsible design, strong governance, and robust cybersecurity will be critical for AI to achieve its transformative economic potential.
Where to focus
When it comes to AI and the workforce, there’s a great deal of anxiety and, of course, a barrage of information for employees to parse. It’s also important to recognise that what executives see as reallocating skills, employees experience as a threat to their jobs and expertise. Management transparency can go a long way towards reducing fear and building trust.
Consider, for example, the actions of the leader of a European supermarket chain who said he had made communicating with employees a goal, so that "everyone in our team understands who we are, what we do, and why we do it." He emphasised the power of role modelling by management: "You communicate by example, not just words."
The case of a global insurance company offers another example of what this looks like in practice. A series of pilots showed top management that there was enormous potential to automate work in the labour-intensive claims function. Company executives were open with employees about the automation ahead, acknowledging that they were likely to downsize.
They also described a road map for employees that involved downsizing through natural attrition. This story about AI boosted trust with employees, who felt the company was treating them with respect.
Employees are more motivated when they understand their organisation’s goals and believe they’re attainable. The implications for leaders trying to take their workforce into the future: create a vivid picture of what the company will look like a few years from now and describe how those outcomes relate to employees’ day-to-day work and longer-term career development.
A standout finding of our survey is the revelation that workers who feel most aligned with leadership goals are 78% more motivated than those who report the least alignment. Many leaders are getting this right: in the technology sector, for example, 73% of employees say they understand their organisation’s goals. Among their peers in the broader workforce, however, only 64% say they have this understanding.
Employees are even less likely to say they believe in their organisation’s long-term goals and their leadership teams’ ability to achieve them. Misunderstanding and misalignment are greater among non-managers than managers.
If leaders articulate a consistent vision and link it to achievable milestones, they can build confidence and credibility—and avoid leaving a vacuum for fear or hype to fill.
Where to focus
The AI story of the insurer we described above points to broader opportunities—and challenges—for leadership alignment. The opportunity is to set your company’s AI story in the context of a clear management narrative about long-term corporate goals and how they’ll create a better future for the company and its employees.
Too few leaders are disciplined about this, sometimes due to a lack of strategic clarity or, in other cases, because they haven’t fully translated corporate priorities into a bigger purpose and the difference it will make for employees. AI raises the ante and the difficulty of creating a clear narrative.
Many companies piloting and scaling AI initiatives face the challenge of how to build uncertain, near-term steps into a broader story about where the company is heading. While there are no easy answers, acknowledging the tension can strengthen employee confidence at a time when many workers doubt top management can achieve its goals.
Workers who believe all of their skills will remain relevant over the next three years are almost twice as motivated as those who think their skills will have no relevance. And workers who feel supported to upskill are 73% more motivated than those who report the least support—which makes access to learning one of the strongest predictors of motivation.
Yet our survey shows employers’ upskilling efforts are uneven. Again, the technology sector leads the way: 71% of tech workers say they learned new skills at work that are helping their career, compared to just 56% of all survey respondents. In our global sample, just 51% of non-managers feel they have the resources they need for learning and development, versus 72% among senior executives. And while 75% of daily users of GenAI at work feel they have the resources they need for learning and development, only 59% of infrequent users feel the same.
There are many ways for employers to address workers’ widely expressed frustration at receiving too little upskilling or too few chances to demonstrate existing skills. The advance of AI makes this imperative even more urgent: leaders should spell out which skills matter most in the future; connect them to business strategy; and create visible, equitable upskilling pathways. But just providing those pathways isn’t enough: without opportunities to test and apply new capabilities on the job, employers risk losing much of the value of upskilling.
Where to focus
Given the rapid evolution of relevant skills as AI takes hold in the workplace, creating meaningful upskilling pathways is mission critical for leaders who want to keep their workforce motivated. Some companies are starting to take this seriously. Walmart, for example, has publicly rolled out AI solutions for its associates—including a translation tool covering 44 languages—and presents them as a key way of building employee skills and increasing effectiveness.
PwC’s research on AI integration and upskilling shows how important it is to provide resources for experimentation and learning by employees. Employers can guide their workforce towards a set of initial use cases to upskill, which can help them become comfortable with the technology, ignite their curiosity, and empower them to explore its potential further.
Research on AI and productivity, coordinated by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with PwC, found that early adopters emphasised the importance of developing and testing GenAI solutions in small groups before wider implementation, focusing on risk management and ensuring systems that maintain human oversight. These companies also fostered a culture of curiosity, experimentation, and exploration to encourage employees to uncover the potential of GenAI and AI agents so they can help drive innovation and growth.
Motivation thrives where employees feel safe and find meaning in their work. These cultural drivers are as critical as technology or skills to sustaining performance and driving innovation—especially in an environment of uncertainty and rapid change.
Our survey finds employees with the highest levels of psychological safety are 72% more motivated than those who feel the least safe. To reinvent their companies as AI accelerates and value pools shift, leaders need to ensure their teams feel safe speaking up, experimenting, and learning from failure. But this is far from the norm in today’s workplace: only 56% of workers feel it’s safe to try new approaches in their workplace, and just 54% say their team treats failures as opportunities to learn and improve.
Variation between sectors underscores their differing innovation pathways and risk appetites: tech workers are much more likely to report safety with trying new approaches, while transportation and logistics employees are far less likely to do so. A point of concern: across all industries, non-managers report notably lower levels of psychological safety than managers.
Our research on meaning at work reveals similar links to worker motivation. Employees who find their work most meaningful are 91% more motivated than those who perceive the least meaning in what they do. Yet only about half of all workers say they’ve found meaningful careers. Managers are far more likely to report meaning at work than non-managers.
We also find workers with greater feelings of fatigue, boredom, anger, or being overwhelmed are 30% less motivated, raising important questions about how leaders can remove sources of organisational friction that sap employees’ energy and moods.
Where to focus
To mobilise the workforce behind reinvention, there are several steps leaders can take. One is to actively reallocate staff—which is not only associated with higher profitability but also energises your people if done well. A skills-first approach can help allocate talent where you need it—and boost employee motivation.
High-performing HR functions can play a significant role, and today’s leaders need to demand that they do. Consider psychological safety: its importance as a motivator suggests leaders should be doubling down on it at a time when technological disruption is creating uncertainty about the future. But several HR leaders have told us the terminology has created confusion, with some employees couching demands for limits on hours or feedback in their need for psychological safety.
Strategic HR leaders can remind executives, managers, and individual contributors alike that constructive candour is at the heart of psychological safety. Research from Harvard professors Amy Edmondson and Michaela Kerrissey emphasises the strong link between accountability and high performance on the one hand and encouraging employees to speak up, disagree respectfully, and admit mistakes on the other.
HR leaders also can stimulate dialogue about personal meaning and incorporate corporate purpose into employee goal-setting processes. And they can use technology to enhance the employee experience, eliminating mood- and motivation-dampening annoyances.
Another tactical step for leaders is to make experimentation safer. Innovation depends on leaders showing that failure isn’t the end point but part of the process as they look to build a culture where employees feel comfortable trying new things. Model the behaviours you want to see by openly sharing examples of experiments that didn’t work and the lessons learned.
At the same time, senior leaders should give managers clear guidance on how to reinforce this mindset on a day-to-day basis, framing setbacks as opportunities to adapt rather than mistakes to punish.
Security, including job stability and financial well-being, is critical to motivation. Workers who are highly optimistic about the future of their role within their organisation are about twice as motivated as those who are not. Similarly, workers who are highly confident about their job security are 51% more motivated than peers lacking such confidence.
Pay is an important piece of the puzzle. Fewer than half of employees in our survey received a raise in the past year, and those who didn’t see a pay boost are markedly less likely to feel satisfied, inspired, or excited at work. For employers, that’s potentially a barrier to readiness for change.
We also found that 14% of workers can’t or struggle to pay their bills each month. A further 42% pay their bills with little or nothing left over for savings. Collectively, that’s 55% of the workforce experiencing financial strain—up from 52% who said the same in 2024.
Workers under financial pressure are less trusting, motivated, or candid: fewer than half say they trust their manager or feel they care about their well-being, compared with about two-thirds of those who are more financially secure. Without that trust, employees are less likely to believe leaders’ narratives about AI or feel supported through disruption. They’re also less comfortable speaking openly.
Where to focus
In addition to motivating workers with money and seeking to avoid demotivation through insecurity, executives can link employees’ financial goals to a drive for AI adoption and value creation.
AI skills now carry a premium; PwC’s AI Jobs Barometer shows AI is making workers more valuable. In this research, we compared the wages of workers in a given occupation who differed only on whether they have AI skills. On average, workers with AI skills earned a 56% wage premium, more than double last year’s gap.
Wage premiums for AI skills are evident in every industry analysed—although they’re greatest in the most AI-exposed sectors, such as financial services and energy. Those wage premiums were matched with growth in the number of jobs with AI skills, along with significant productivity gains.
Beyond helping employees boost their value by building their AI skills, employers can take some simple steps to bolster financial wellness—and demonstrate care for their teams on this key topic. For example, employers can provide objective, trustworthy resources such as coaching, workshops, webinars, and online tools—which previous PwC research shows workers increasingly value.
Employers can help reduce stigma around seeking financial help by actively promoting these benefits and ensuring easy access for all staff demographics.
The leadership challenge is not only to deploy AI—it’s to ensure workers feel prepared, motivated, and aligned to embrace it. Our survey shows motivation is strongest when employees see a future for themselves and have access to learning; believe in management and its priorities; experience meaning, psychological safety, and positive emotions at work; and feel financially rewarded. These aren’t new priorities, but they’re even more important as leaders seek to energise their employees for the future of work. With trust, clarity, and cultural support, today’s uncertainty can become tomorrow’s AI readiness.
We surveyed 49,843 workers across 48 countries and regions and 28 sectors from 7 July through 18 August 2025. The figures in this report are weighted proportionally to the working population’s gender and age distribution in each country or region, ensuring workers’ views are broadly representative across all major geographies.
To analyse drivers of motivation, we asked workers about feelings of pride in their jobs, willingness to go above and beyond, and how much they looked forward to going to work. We used their responses to create a motivation index, which indicates how motivated they are at work.
To dive deeper, we used advanced statistical methods to explore how different factors, such as trust, autonomy, leadership alignment, and psychological safety, might impact motivation. This allowed us to understand relationships between variables, while statistically matching workers on other factors such as gender, age, and geography.
Global Workforce Leader, PwC United Kingdom
Workforce Solutions Leader, PwC United States
Partner, Workforce Transformation, PwC South East Asia Consulting, PwC Singapore
Partner, National Workforce Transformed Platform Leader, PwC Canada