Half of workers in one Southeast Asian country report experiencing stress for much of the day, the highest rate in the region. Yet the same country also has one of the region’s most engaged and satisfied workforces.
This seemingly contradictory finding comes from Gallup’s annual State of the Global Workplace 2026, which surveyed 263,810 respondents across more than 160 countries throughout 2025 about how engaged they were at work and how much emotional stress they experienced each day.
The country with the most stressed workforce is the Philippines. Some 50 percent of Filipino workers reported experiencing stress during a lot of the previous day when surveyed, twice the regional average of 25 percent and above the global average of 40 percent.
The figure has steadily risen from 45 percent in 2022. The Philippines also recorded the region’s highest rates of daily sadness (31 percent) and anger (29 percent), both above the regional averages.
What Went Down, What Went Up
Outside the Philippines, the picture is much more varied, with trends moving in the opposite direction.
Viet Nam recorded a daily stress rate of just 13 percent, down sharply from 35 percent in 2021. Thailand also improved, from 41 percent to 25 percent over the same period. Indonesia recorded a low of 14 percent.
Singapore was the notable exception in the other direction: 43 percent of its workers experienced daily stress, with a sharp generational gap between younger workers (53 percent) and older workers (37 percent).
What makes the Philippines even more striking is its engagement score, Gallup’s measure of how involved and enthusiastic workers are about their jobs. The Philippines led the region, with 39 percent of workers classified as “engaged,” well above the regional average of 25 percent and the global average of 20 percent. It was followed by Thailand (34 percent), Indonesia (27 percent), and Malaysia (25 percent).
Singapore, despite its high stress levels, had the lowest engagement rate in the region at 14 percent, also among the lowest globally.
So, Singapore and the Philippines both have highly stressed workforces, but their levels of engagement at work could not be more different.
Highly Stressed, Yet Also the Most Optimistic
Gallup’s data shows that 76 percent of Filipino workers considered 2025 a good time to find a job in their country, far higher than in other countries across the region. A separate survey by Jobstreet by SEEK, Workplace Happiness Index: Philippines 2025 published in mid-2026, adds that 77 percent of Filipino workers felt “extremely happy” or “somewhat happy” at work.
Gallup itself does not use “happiness” as an official indicator. Its main measures are engagement, daily emotions, and overall life evaluation. But read side by side, the two surveys tell a consistent story: Filipino workers are among the most optimistic and satisfied in the region, while also being the most stressed by Gallup’s measure.
That optimism does not extend to overall life evaluation. In Gallup’s “thriving, struggling, suffering” scale, only 34 percent of Filipino workers were classified as “thriving,” slightly below the regional average of 36 percent and exactly equal to the global average.
Gallup’s Philippines data does not specifically explain why high engagement can coexist with high stress. Its global report, however, offers a framework for a similar pattern: highly engaged workers tend to become “psychological owners” of their work, carrying greater responsibility and emotional burdens than less engaged workers. The same pattern can also be seen globally among managers and leaders.
Opposite Pattern from Viet Nam
If the Philippines represents high stress alongside high engagement, Viet Nam shows a different pattern altogether. Only 9 percent of Viet Namese workers are classified as engaged, even lower than Singapore, while its daily stress rate is also low at 13 percent.
Yet Viet Nam leads Asia in Gallup’s “thriving” measure, with 59 percent of workers saying they are thriving in life. That is far above the regional average of 36 percent, followed by Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand.
In other words, low engagement among Viet Namese workers does not mean they view their lives negatively. It is almost the exact opposite of the pattern seen in the Philippines.
The Region Still Looks More Promising
Beyond country-level data, the report also records a shift in perceptions of regional job markets. The measure reflects workers’ perceptions of how easy it is to find a good job, rather than macroeconomic indicators such as unemployment rates.
Since the post-pandemic period, Australia and New Zealand had consistently ranked as the region with the most positive job-market outlook in the world. This year, Southeast Asia overtook them for the first time, pushing Australia and New Zealand into second place, while the United States and Canada ranked second from the bottom.
