Nov 12 2009
Please be advised that Gallup and Healthways, Inc. (NASDAQ: HWAY) today released the Gallup-Healthways Monthly U.S. Well-Being Report for October 2009.
In October, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™ (WBI) posted its second straight monthly drop since the year-to-date high of 67.0 in August. Regionally, Western states experienced the most negative impact from the drop. Of the four U.S. regions tracked by the Well-Being Index, only the West is down year-over-year.
On the heels of last week’s Labor Department announcement that unemployment in the U.S. rose unexpectedly to 10.2 percent in October, the highest level of U.S. unemployment in more than 26 years, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index is finding that workers who are still on the job across the nation are reporting increasing levels of dissatisfaction.
While not statistically significant, the 1.0 percentage point drop in the Work Evaluation Sub-Index last month pulls the index down by more than five percentage points from its all-time high of 53.3 in October 2008, near the beginning of the recent U.S. recession. That drop translates into reduced well-being at work for about 4.7 million working Americans, possibly the result of on-going downsizing, increased work loads and expectations, more competition for fewer jobs and an overall reduction in the quality of work environments around the country.