CompaniesBIO

A majority of Americans said last month that price increases were causing financial hardship for their households, a Gallup survey released this week found. That share, 56%, is up from 49% in January and 45% in November 2021. It includes 12% of respondents who described the hardship as "severe" and 44% who called it "moderate." Gallup defined severe hardship as one that jeopardizes a household's ability to maintain its current standard of living, while moderate hardship was one that affects a household somewhat, but does not endanger its current standard of living. A confluence of factors, many of them pandemic-related, has led to increased prices for nearly everything, from food to housing and gasoline. Pent-up demand for goods and services, consumers' increased ability to spend their savings, supply chain disruptions and labor shortages have all helped bring about the current inflationary environment. Significantly more middle-income American household...

At least half of all American workers now do the bare minimum of what's required from them at their jobs according to a new survey from polling group Gallup. Industry watchers and workforce experts have adopted the term, "quiet quitting" to describe these types of workers; people who have chosen to reject the hustle culture that has dominated conversations around work and career for decades. And in a pandemic era that has physically and emotionally stretched many employees thin, some have begun to speak up about some of the indignities of the modern workplace. While some have defined quiet quitting as simply enforcing boundaries between work life and personal life, the Gallup survey paints a different picture. The survey attributes the decline in engagement at work to a lack of clarity about expectations, fewer opportunities to learn and grow, not feeling cared about and a disconnect to the organization’s mission or purpose, said Jim Harter, Gallup's Chief Scientist f...