UK Job Satisfaction Record Low: Fewer Workers Willing to Go the Extra Mile

The UK job satisfaction record low is not a mood on social media. It is in the numbers. In the 2025 wave of the British Social Attitudes survey, 74% of workers said they were satisfied with their main job, down from 81% in 2015 and the lowest figure since the question was first asked in 1989 (Resolution Foundation). Information verified through 8 November 2026.

One in four workers would not even say they were fairly satisfied. That share has risen from one in five a decade ago (BBC News via briefing).

UK job satisfaction record low and the quiet quitting UK workers pattern

The sharper fall is in effort, not just mood. Workers willing to work harder than required to help their employer succeed dropped from 69% in 2015 to 55% in 2025, roughly back to the level recorded in 1997 (Resolution Foundation; Psychreg).

The Resolution Foundation chapter, published on 1 November 2026, calls that pattern consistent with quiet quitting — doing no more than the job requires — and its author Hannah Slaughter described the wider shift as a “dissatisfaction drain” that does not bode well for productivity and labour supply (Resolution Foundation; RESET).

But the report resists a lazy-workers story. The drop in extra effort appeared among men and women, graduates and non-graduates, and across occupations, with the largest fall, 17 points, among managerial and professional workers (Psychreg). If the people with the most senior jobs are pulling back hardest, something about the jobs themselves has changed.

Work may also simply have got more intense. The report notes that falling agreement could reflect a workplace where going beyond the required level feels less realistic, not a sudden refusal to care (Psychreg).

What workers want from a job, and what they say they get

Look at the gaps. The share saying a high income is important to them rose from 67% to 78% over the decade. Only 23% say their job provides one. That is a gap of 55 points, and it has widened since 2015 (Resolution Foundation).

Control over hours shows the same split. Some 61% now say being able to decide their own working hours matters, up from 46%. Just 31% say they can do that in their current job (Resolution Foundation).

The everyday texture of work has thinned, too. Workers who call their job interesting fell from 74% to 63%. Those reporting opportunities for advancement fell from 35% to 26% (Resolution Foundation). In the survey analysis, having an interesting job was the attribute most strongly tied to being satisfied (Psychreg).

Satisfaction fell further among men, from 79% to 70%, than among women, from 83% to 78%. The youngest workers, aged 18 to 29, were the least satisfied of all, at 64% (Psychreg). Hybrid workers reported higher satisfaction than fully remote workers or those who never work from home, though the authors caution that hybrid workers are disproportionately in professional jobs, so the snapshot does not prove hybrid working itself causes the difference (Psychreg).

Work sits a little less centrally in people’s lives than it did. Among 18 to 64-year-olds, the share who say they would enjoy a paid job even if they did not need the money fell from 66% to 59% (Psychreg). Only 4% would prefer not to work at all — a figure that has not changed significantly in a decade (Resolution Foundation).

Workers willing to work harder than required are not simply leaving

You might expect unhappy workers to walk. They mostly have not.

The share likely to look for a new job in the next 12 months barely moved, from 32% in 2015 to 34% now. Actual job moves fell. Quarterly job-to-job moves dropped from 2.6% of workers in 2005 to 2.4% in 2015 and 2.2% in 2025, on Office for National Statistics figures cited in the report (Resolution Foundation; RESET).

That stuck quality matters. The report argues that falling moves have themselves held back productivity, because workers end up mismatched to jobs they might leave in a more fluid market (RESET). Young men show the tension most starkly: among men aged 18 to 29, 63% say they are likely to look for a new job, up from 42%, while their actual moves fell from 3.2% to 2.4% (RESET).

Desire for full-time work has shifted in the same direction. The share who would ideally work full time fell from 57% to 47%, driven entirely by men, whose figure dropped from 77% to 62%. Actual full-time employment rose over the same period, from 57% to 60% (Resolution Foundation). People are working hours they say they would not choose.

Sir John Curtice, co-editor of the British Social Attitudes report, pushed back on the simplest reading: young people have not become more “work-shy”, nor have workers in general become more reluctant to change jobs (RESET). The numbers back him on appetite. What has fallen is follow-through, and what jobs offer in return.

Analysis: read the survey as a broken exchange, not a character flaw. Pay matters more, control matters more, interesting work matters most — and all three are scarcer in the jobs people actually hold. Extra effort was the discretionary part of that exchange. It is the first thing withdrawn when the rest of the deal thins out, and the survey, asked only in 1989, 1997, 2005, 2015 and 2025, cannot on its own prove that low satisfaction caused weak productivity (RESET). What it can show, plainly, is a workforce still showing up, still largely wanting work, and markedly less willing to give more than it is asked for. Employers who want that effort back will have to rebuild the parts of the job that made it feel worth giving.

Photo: Missouri State Archives, via Wikimedia Commons (No restrictions)

Sources

1. https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/app/uploads/2026/11/BSA-Work-in-progress.pdf
2. https://www.psychreg.org/uk-job-satisfaction-lowest-since-1989-fewer-workers-willing-go-extra-mile/
3. https://www.reset-media.com/employment/job-satisfaction-record-low-britain
4. https://briefing.listenseattle.com/2026/11/03/quiet-quitting-could-be-hitting-the-economy-heres-why-2/