05/23/2026
Found this interesting in today’s Globe and Mail. If you’re suffering from workplace stress please consider taking our Autumn Eight Week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program! For more information visit mindfulnessontherocks.ca
Workplace stress has become a public-health concernEMILY DURHAM OPINION Emily Durham is the author of Clock In: No-BS Advice for Getting Ahead in Your Career (Without Losing Your Mind).
The Globe and Mail (Ontario Edition)
May 23, 2026
If you’ve opened social media lately, you’ve probably noticed that every other post is about hating your job, quitting your job, burning out from your job or failing to find a new job. From TikToks exposing highly impersonal high-volume layoffs to Instagram Reels about flatlining salaries, workplace anxiety is becoming a trending topic for working people.
When it comes to how to deal with this stress, we’re told to “manage” it by taking periodic breaks, practising mindfulness and exercising. We are advised to simply balance our workload, ask for help and use vacation days to avoid burnout.
You may have heard things like: “If you can manage your time better, you’ll feel better.”
In other words, it’s been largely treated like an individual issue.
But with Statistics Canada reporting that 62 per cent of working Canadians cite high levels of stress at their jobs, we should ask: At what point is workplace stress no longer an individual concern but a public health one?
I would argue it already is.
The rise of reported workplace stress is directly tied to the incredibly tumultuous job market. Recently, Canadian unemployment rose to nearly 7 per cent, with more than 110,000 full-time jobs disappearing in the first four months of 2026. This represents one of the steepest nonpandemic year job losses we have seen in almost two decades. With many of these layoffs communicated via cold 6 a.m. e-mails, companies are more comfortable than ever conducting mass purges in the name of “efficiency” and “AI investment.”
In this environment, even the strongest performers never feel truly secure at work.
Organizations’ increased focus on efficiency and “doing more with less” has also resulted in a meaningful uptick in the workload of remaining employees. More than half of Canadian employees say their workload has increased in the past year (many without an increase in pay).
And so, we are working in a perfect storm. When organizations conduct massive layoffs over and over, employees are naturally in a constant state of fear, wondering when they will be next. As a result, now more than ever, folks are terrified to set boundaries at work, limit overtime or ask for help. To avoid the risk of being terminated, they just quietly take on more.
This is true most especially for Gen Z, who have the highest reported workplace anxiety across all demographics. Gen Z has had the unique disadvantage of joining the work force during an AI revolution that has axed the number of entry level roles available in an already challenging market. And with Gen Z’s constant exposure to layoff vlogs and users detailing “Day 300 of job hunting” on social media, is it any wonder they’re experiencing heightened workplace stress?
Still, this anxiety isn’t limited to just one cohort; it touches most workers to some extent, across generations, and so it’s clear the problem is not related to employee time management, workload balancing or a lack of work-life boundaries. The real issue is that the conditions of work at large have changed. We no longer operate in a world where working 20-plus years at a company protects you from layoffs, or in a labour market where hard work is rewarded with job security. In fact, it’s the total opposite. In effect, workers today are asked to carry the fear of being laid off, and try to stave off panic that their role will soon be eliminated by AI, all while working overtime to help the company manage after reducing 20 per cent of its work force.
The job market has changed so much in the past five years, and yet it is seen as an individual issue to manage.
The fallout is clear. Chronic job insecurity has been consistently linked to anxiety disorders, depression, sleep disruption and even cardiovascular risk. In the U.S., workplace stress has been linked to an estimated 120,000 deaths annually. The World Health Organization estimates that depression and anxiety cost the global economy 12 billion lost working days every year. When workplace instability begins affecting sleep, health outcomes and national productivity at scale, it stops being a personal resilience issue. It becomes a public health one.
Public-health issues are determined by how many people are affected, how serious the harm is, whether it’s preventable and whether the cause is systemic. By this framework, the work stress epidemic has become one.
The response to employee wellness clearly needs to change. Workers can’t “self-care” their way out of systemic instability. They deserve to know that the immense pressure they feel Monday to Friday is valid and a natural reaction to an unstable system, not stemming from a lack of resilience or skill. Yes, taking time off regularly, having breaks throughout the day and balancing workload can be helpful in tolerating this heightened stress, but it doesn’t solve the root cause – the current conditions of work.
Companies should be more clearly held responsible for the well-being of their teams. And it should be the employer’s responsibility to ensure workloads are sustainable, jobs are clearly defined and performance measures are consistent. Organizational changes should be made responsibly, with empathy and not just in response to short-term needs. Otherwise, workers will continue to feel like they are failing when it is the system setting them up to do so.
If the conditions of work are driving immense stress, then the solution can’t be better coping mechanisms. It has to be better conditions.
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