80% of Australian employees are reporting symptoms of burnout.
As a psychiatrist, I want to tell you what that number means. And what it doesn’t.
When I quote that figure from stage, someone usually wants to argue with it afterwards. Fair enough. It deserves interrogation.
The 80% isn’t one rogue survey. Two independent Australian studies landed on the same number: Robert Half in 2024, and the Workplace Options psychological safety study in 2025, which also found Australian employees are the most stressed in the Asia-Pacific region.
New Zealand isn’t travelling any better. Massey University’s wellbeing@work research, which has tracked burnout since 2020, found 57% of NZ employees now sit in the high-risk category for severe burnout, a record high surpassing anything seen during the pandemic. Among hybrid workers, the figure climbed past 72%.
These are surveys asking people whether they’re experiencing symptoms of burnout: exhaustion, cynicism about work, feeling less effective than they used to be. Self-reported experience, not clinical assessment.
When researchers use validated instruments with strict thresholds, the numbers are lower. In healthcare studies, around a third of healthcare workers meet the full measurement criteria.
So which number is real? Both.
The lower figure tells us how many people are at the severe end. The 80% tells us something arguably more important: the load is now carried across most of the workforce, not a struggling few. Burnout has stopped being an individual story and become a workforce one.
And here’s the framing I’d encourage you to drop entirely: nobody is “clinically burnt out.” The World Health Organization classifies burnout as an occupational phenomenon, not a medical condition. That distinction matters, and it’s where I’ll pick up next week.
In the meantime, treat any single burnout statistic the way you’d treat a colleague who says they’re fine. Worth a second question.
Human Foundations is a weekly look at the science behind high performance and wellbeing at work, from keynote speaker, psychiatrist, comedian and author Dr Jo Prendergast. Subscribe to get each edition as it lands.
Next week: why burnout is not a personal failing, and why the most resilient people often burn out worst.
Dr Jo turns this thinking into keynotes for conferences and leadership teams.
