BambooHR®, the leading people intelligence platform for HR, payroll, and benefits, has released its new workplace report titled "America's Morale Map: How Happiness Scores Unveil Hidden Labor Risks." Drawing from employee Net Promoter Score® (eNPS) data collected throughout 2025, the analysis reveals a nearly 40-point gap in average happiness scores between the highest- and lowest-ranking states, highlighting significant variations in workforce sentiment across the U.S. labor market.
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The report challenges the common practice of using turnover as the primary indicator of employee engagement. Low turnover can signal stability, but in many cases it reflects employees feeling trapped rather than motivated, increasing risks of quiet quitting, burnout, and reduced performance.
"Low turnover can look like stability on the surface, but in many states it may be masking disengagement," said Jonathan Vaas, Chief Legal Officer and Head of HR of BambooHR. "Our data shows that when employees stay because they feel stuck versus fulfilled, organizations face a hidden risk of quiet quitting and burnout. Leaders need to look beyond churn to understand how their people are feeling."
By combining eNPS sentiment data with turnover metrics, the analysis identifies four distinct labor-market realities. Ideal stability states benefit from both high satisfaction and retention, while healthy dynamism environments offer strong morale alongside abundant opportunities for mobility. Acute attrition states show clear dissatisfaction paired with high churn, but the most prevalent and concerning category—hidden risk—features low satisfaction alongside low turnover. This pattern appears prominently in some of the nation's largest and highest-income labor markets, where limited job movement may trap dissatisfied workers.
Employee happiness appears driven more by labor-market dynamics—particularly opportunity and mobility—than by regional factors such as culture, cost of living, income, or political leanings. States with comparable demographics and industries can exhibit sharply different sentiment based on how retention and opportunity interact.
For employers, the key insight is the need for a broader view of workforce health. Relying solely on turnover or retention metrics can obscure underlying issues that impact productivity, culture, and long-term sustainability.
"The unhappy employee who stays often becomes a drag on performance and a signal to others that problems are being tolerated," said Vaas. "When the underlying causes of disengagement are not addressed, that dynamic weakens culture, slows productivity, and creates longer-term, systemic costs that are difficult to recover from."
The full report, including detailed data visualizations and state-level breakdowns, is available at http://bamboohr.com/resources/data-at-work/data... The methodology uses aggregated, anonymized eNPS from thousands of U.S. companies on the BambooHR platform, with states requiring at least 100 quarterly responses included (excluding only Mississippi). Turnover data comes from BambooHR workforce activity records, and classifications use the national median as the high/low threshold.
About BambooHR Net Promoter Score® (eNPS)
BambooHR's employee Net Promoter Score® (eNPS) offering helps organizations quickly understand how employees feel about their workplace. Through regular, confidential feedback collected with a simple, standardized question, leaders can track sentiment over time, spot emerging risks, and benchmark results across teams and locations. Built directly into the BambooHR platform, eNPS pairs with workforce metrics like turnover and tenure to provide a clearer, more actionable view of engagement and retention risk. Net Promoter, NPS, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered U.S. trademarks, and NetPromoter Score and Net Promoter System are service marks, of Bain & Company, Inc., NICE Systems, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.
About BambooHR
BambooHR® is the leading global HR software platform that sets people free to do great work™. It unifies AI-powered HR, payroll, benefits, talent management, and more than 150 integrations in a single system designed to simplify people processes and improve workforce clarity. Through its people intelligence platform, BambooHR delivers real-time insights that help organizations unlock potential and adapt as work evolves. Trusted by more than 30,000 companies across 190 countries and 50 industries, BambooHR supports millions of employees and serves as a system of record for organizations around the world.
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