Workplace Boredom Statistics: Causes, Effects and Fixes

Boredom sounds like a small complaint. Anyone who has sat through a meeting that went nowhere knows the feeling. But when boredom becomes the normal state of a job, it shows up in things an HR leader does track: people looking for the exit, sick days, distraction and work done badly.

The harder question is whether boredom is behind the disengagement and departures you are seeing, or whether something else is. This guide sets out what the research says about how common boredom at work is, who is most affected, what causes it and what it is linked to, and what reduces it. It ends with a practical way to test for it in your own organization.

One caution before the numbers. The figures below come from the original studies and surveys, and they measure different things: boredom on its own, boredom and disengagement together, and reasons for looking for a new job. They are given with their dates and samples so you can judge how far they apply to you.

DisclosureJake Jorgovan co-founded Alpha Apex Group, which is mentioned in this article.

What is workplace boredom?

A 2024 systematic review of the research (opens in a new tab) by Edwin van Hooft and Madelon van Hooff defines work-related boredom as "a profound negative and often deactivating activity-related emotional state". In plain terms, the work feels empty and the person's energy drops.

Boredom is not simply having too little to do. Westgate and Wilson's model of boredom (opens in a new tab), published in Psychological Review in 2018, traces it to two separate problems:

• Attention: a mismatch between what a task demands and the mental resources a person has available. Their studies found that both understimulation and overstimulation can produce boredom.
• Meaning: a mismatch between the activity and the goals the person values, or no valued goal at all.

Either deficit can cause boredom on its own. That has a practical consequence: a busy team can still be bored if the work feels pointless, and piling on more of the same work does not cure boredom that comes from a lack of meaning.

Boredom is also not the same as burnout. The 2024 review treats it as a distinct construct within employee well-being, and the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health's How is Finland doing? study (opens in a new tab) measures the two separately: job boredom as a response to a lack of stimulation or challenge in the work, burnout as a syndrome caused by prolonged work stress.

How common is boredom at work?

Three surveys give figures on how common boredom at work is. The Finnish national survey measures boredom directly. Udemy's 2016 survey measures boredom or disengagement among US office workers, and Korn Ferry's 2017 survey asked professionals why they would look for a new job. They ask different questions of different groups, so read each on its own terms.

The Udemy survey (opens in a new tab) was run online by Toluna for Udemy, which sells workplace learning, and it counts "bored or disengaged" as one group. It also found that 39% of respondents had called in sick because they were bored or disengaged.

Korn Ferry's survey (opens in a new tab) asked professionals why they planned to look for a new job. Boredom came first at 33%, ahead of culture fit (24%), losing or expecting to lose their job (21%) and higher salary (19%). The figure is sometimes quoted as the share of people who leave because of boredom. It is the top reason respondents gave for looking for a new job, which is a narrower claim.

The Finnish study measures job boredom on its own with a three-item scale, in a sample drawn to represent the working population. Its summer 2026 results (opens in a new tab) are published in Finnish. In its late 2025 wave, 19% also felt bored at least several times a week, and boredom at work was at a higher level than in late 2019. It describes one country's workers. Engagement is a related but different measure: Gallup's figures on employees who are present but not engaged are in the guide to quiet quitting statistics.

Who gets bored at work most?

The largest study in this guide covered 11,468 employees in 87 Finnish organizations. Lotta Harju, Jari Hakanen and Wilmar Schaufeli reported in 2014 (opens in a new tab) that "male, under-36-year-old employees and employees working in transportation, manufacturing, arts, recreation, and entertainment experienced the most job boredom". They concluded that job boredom "concerns a wide range of industries".

Finland's national figures for summer 2026 point the same way on age. In the How is Finland doing? study, 28% of 18- to 29-year-olds and 23% of 30- to 45-year-olds felt bored at work daily or several times a week, against 15% of 46- to 55-year-olds and 12% of those aged 56 to 66. Employees reported it more often than supervisors: 20% against 14%.

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Original plot of Finnish Institute of Occupational Health summer 2026 results, published October 5, 2026. Frequent means daily or a few times a week. These are Finnish age-group estimates, not U.S. workforce rates.ttl.fi (opens in a new tab) · ttl.fi (opens in a new tab)

Treat these as patterns to check against your own workforce. Both describe Finnish workers, and the industries the 2014 study names are where boredom was highest in its sample.

What causes boredom at work?

The 2024 systematic review sorts the causes found in the research into three groups:

• The job: low challenge demands, high hindrance demands, low job resources and a poor fit between the person and the job.
• The social setting: low social support and high social tension.
• The person: age, personality, work commitment and job crafting (how much people reshape their own work).

Employees describe the same causes in their own words. In the 2016 Udemy survey, the most common reasons people gave for being bored were limited opportunities to learn new skills (46%) and unchallenging work that does not use their education or background (44%).

Most of these causes are design and management questions an employer can act on. They also explain why a busy team can still be bored. The review counts high hindrance demands among the job causes. In the Westgate and Wilson model, the attention problem can come from demands that exceed a person's mental resources as well as from too little stimulation, and the meaning problem from work that seems to serve no purpose.

What are the effects of boredom at work?

The research links boredom at work to health, intentions to leave, behavior and productivity. Most of the findings are associations measured in surveys, so they show that bored employees fare worse without putting a price on it.

Health and intentions to leave

In the Finnish study, bored employees were more likely to report turnover and early retirement intentions, poor health and stress symptoms. The study measured intentions to leave, which are an early warning sign; it did not count departures.

Behavior

Madelon van Hooff and Edwin van Hooft's 2014 study (opens in a new tab) separated the feeling of boredom from what people do when bored. Boredom was related to depressive complaints, distress and counterproductive work behavior, and those links ran through bored behavior.

Productivity

A 2024 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology (opens in a new tab) by Casher Belinda, Shimul Melwani and Chaitali Kapadia found that employees often suppress boredom to "power through" a dull task. In these studies, boredom could carry over into mind-wandering and lower productivity on later tasks. The researchers ran two field studies and an experiment, with more than 1,500 participants in total, according to Florida International University's summary of the research (opens in a new tab).

What reduces boredom at work?

The studies point to three levers, all in how work is designed and managed. They are changes to test in your own organization.

More challenge, and room to find it

In a three-year study of 1,630 highly educated Finnish employees, Harju, Hakanen and Schaufeli found (opens in a new tab) that "seeking challenges in particular negatively predicted job boredom and positively predicted work engagement". The same study found the reverse effect too: job boredom seems to impede job crafting. People who are already bored are less likely to reshape their work on their own, so managers may need to open the door. The 2014 survey of 189 employees points the same way: job crafting was related to less boredom, and its authors name it as a potential intervention tool.

Meaning in the sequence of work

In the 2024 productivity study, starting a task employees saw as meaningful broke the link between earlier boredom and later mind-wandering. This limits the effect of boredom on later work more than it prevents boredom. Florida International University's summary suggests that managers can highlight the importance and impact of different tasks, so that employees find more meaning in them. Unavoidable dull work is easier to absorb when it is followed by work that clearly matters.

Learning and growth

In the 2016 Udemy survey, 80% said opportunities to learn new skills would increase their interest and engagement. That figure comes from a learning company and records what employees expect; it does not measure the result of a learning program. It is still a useful question to ask alongside a review of how challenging the work is.

Where role design comes in

Role design is where these meet. In a 2023 post on preparing a business for growth, I wrote that "a job post should be a document you can refer back to evaluate if this hire did a good job or not": it defines the 90-day expectations and results and what the person will achieve in the first year. I'd apply the same discipline to boredom. Write down what the role must achieve, then use it to start a conversation with the person in it: which of those outcomes still challenge them, and what could they learn next?

How to check whether boredom is part of your turnover problem

The published figures tell you boredom is common enough to check for and that it travels with intentions to leave. They cannot tell you whether it is the problem in your organization, or what your departures cost; the employee turnover statistics guide covers replacement costs. These steps show where boredom and turnover occur together and help you choose changes to test.

1. 1

   Ask about boredom directly

   Ask how often people feel bored at work, then whether the work is challenging, uses their skills and gives them chances to learn. Include those questions in pulse surveys and exit interviews. The study of 87 Finnish organizations used an established measure, the Dutch Boredom Scale, which your survey provider may be able to include.

2. 2

   Separate underload from overload

   Because boredom can come from too little demand or too much, ask about workload and about meaning separately. A team that is bored and overloaded needs fewer obstacles and clearer purpose. More of the same work will not help.

3. 3

   Look where the research says to look, then check your own data

   In the Finnish study, men, employees under 36 and those in transportation, manufacturing, arts, recreation and entertainment reported the most boredom; in the Udemy survey, a lack of learning and challenge were the most cited reasons. Compare their responses and their voluntary turnover with the rest of the workforce before assuming the pattern holds for you.

4. 4

   Fix the role before the program

   Where boredom shows up, review the roles concerned: what each must achieve in 90 days and a year, where the challenge is, and what the person will learn. Give managers explicit room to let people take on new challenges.

5. 5

   Measure again

   Repeat the same questions after the changes and track intentions to leave and voluntary departures over the following year. Where you can, compare with similar teams that made no changes, and note anything else that could affect retention. Treat the results as evidence to weigh: on their own they cannot prove that boredom caused the departures.

When you last lost a strong performer, did anyone ask whether the job had stopped stretching them?