US Incident

Explainer

Burnout and mental health

Burnout is not a line on most OSHA 300 logs. It is still part of the official public-health record — from a CDC survey, not from the injury census.

These figures are not injury rates. They come from the CDC Quality of Worklife survey, as reported in CDC Vital Signs (updated October 24, 2023), comparing 2018 and 2022. They are kept separate from BLS employer-reported injury and illness counts.

In short

NIOSH lists high stress and job burnout among the major risks for health-care workers: long hours, physical demands, exposure to suffering, and the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Vital Signs analysis found that poor mental-health symptoms increased more for health workers than for other worker groups between 2018 and 2022.

What the CDC survey found

  • Burnout: 46% of health workers reported feeling burned out often or very often in 2022, up from 32% in 2018. Other worker groups did not show a similar rise.
  • Harassment: 13% of health workers reported harassment in 2022, up from 6% in 2018 — more than double.
  • Turnover intention: 44% intended to look for a new job in 2022, up from 33% in 2018.
  • Trust in management: fell from 84% to 78%.
  • Workplace support for productivity: fell from 91% to 82%.

Health workers who reported harassment were more likely to report burnout, depression, and anxiety than those who did not. Workers who described more supportive workplaces reported fewer mental-health problems.

Source: CDC Vital Signs, “Health Workers Face a Mental Health Crisis,” cdc.gov/vitalsigns/health-worker-mental-health, updated October 24, 2023.

Official resources