U.S. Workforce Reports Rising AI Anxiety and Eroding Employer Trust

According to Modern Health's workplace report published via Business Wire and reproduced by the Montreal Gazette, a survey of 1,000 full-time U.S. employees at companies with 250 or more employees documents rising workplace strain tied to AI concern, political stress, and declining trust in employer mental-health supports. The report finds 33% of employees strongly agree their employer values their mental health, down from 41% in 2025. The survey records 58% of respondents saying they feel safer talking to a chatbot about mental health than to their workplace HR department, up from 50% in 2025. The report also states 41% of employees have felt judged for using employer-provided mental health days, and 50% avoid using them.

The Modern Health report is based on a survey sample of 1,000 full-time employees at larger U.S. employers, with results reported in percentage-point comparisons to 2025 figures in the same survey series. The press release includes a direct quote from Alison Borland, Chief People and Strategy Officer at Modern Health, in which she says the U.S. workforce faces an extraordinary collision of stressors - AI, economic pressure, and global uncertainty - driving a level of strain that is no longer sustainable and that is starting to show up in very visible ways. These are reported survey outcomes; the release does not provide raw survey methodology beyond sample size and employer-size filter.

Editorial analysis: Workplace surveys that compare year-over-year sentiment commonly show that perceptions of employer support can shift quickly when external anxieties rise. Companies operating benefits programs and mental-health platforms often track utilization and stigma as leading indicators of unseen deterioration in employee well-being.

Editorial analysis: For practitioners, the report highlights two cross-cutting trends relevant to HR, people-analytics, and workplace-product teams. First, reported comfort with chatbots over HR suggests rising employee interest in confidential, scalable support options. Second, persistent stigma around mental-health days, particularly among senior managers in the sample, points to measurement challenges when utilization metrics understate true need.

Editorial analysis: Observers should look for follow-up releases with methodology details, disaggregated results by industry and tenure, and any employer-side uptake statistics for third-party digital mental-health tools. Also monitor whether future surveys show stabilization or further declines in employer trust and whether chatbot usage for mental health continues to rise.