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Are you getting over a *cough cough* cold today?
If so, you’re one of the 22.6 million U.S. employees who were planning to miss work the Monday after the Super Bowl, a 40% increase from last year, according to The Harris Poll data from UKG.
That number includes folks who planned to call in sick––even if they aren’t actually ill––as well as those who planned to “ghost” their employer by skipping work and not telling them. Some have pre-planned their absence, with 12.9 million taking PTO and 4.8 million swapping shifts with coworkers. Even then, an additional 12.9 million said they would be late to work on Monday. Talk about last-minute play calls.
For those who did show up to work, productivity may have been down to start the week. The poll found that about 40% of those who watched the game and went to work would be distracted by media coverage of the game on Monday, up from 28% last year.
While the scale of these absences is record-breaking, the phenomenon isn’t new. About 43% of employed Americans believe the Monday after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday. Indiana is even taking steps to enshrine that idea into law: A bill was introduced in the state’s legislature last week that would make the day a state holiday.
The number of workers calling out sick on Monday wasn’t the only record broken during the Super Bowl: While the Kansas City Chiefs failed to beat the Philadelphia Eagles to secure a three-peat, the game was the most-watched matchup in Super Bowl history. Fox garnered 126 million viewers across platforms, including its free streaming service Tubi.
Happy reading, and hope you all have a lovely week!
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Deep Dive: Employee Confidence Starts The Year On A Sour Note
One month into 2025 and employees are not confident in the business outlook for their employers, according to a new Glassdoor report. Layoffs, economic fears and a new presidential administration are to blame.
It’s a new year and employee confidence is once again going down. According to Glassdoor’s employee confidence index, which measures workers’ ratings of their employer’s six-month business outlook (either positive, negative or neutral), only 45.1% of U.S. employees have a positive view on their employer’s future. That’s the lowest percentage since last February, when the index hit its lowest since Glassdoor began tracking it in 2016.
The weak sentiment comes on the heels of January’s jobs report that saw 143,000 non-farm jobs get added to the economy, lower than analyst expectations. It’s part of the reason as to why sentiment is low––economic anxieties, which rose in January, and news of layoffs have rattled workers.
Those working in government and public administration positions lost the most confidence, according to Glassdoor, falling 2.8 percentage points compared to December. The legality of various Trump Administration policies affecting federal workers, including buyout offers, funding cuts and the effective closure of entire agencies like USAID, have made federal workers uneasy about their future. Full return-to-office plans and funding for state offices has also been put into question. That’s without counting the impact on federal contractors who’ve had their contracts and funding frozen, if not cut completely.
Other industries, however, have seen an increase in confidence compared to last year. Insurance saw the biggest gain during a month filled with news of natural disasters and subsequent coverage questions. Aerospace and defense also saw a 5% increase in confidence from last year.
Employee confidence levels also tend to differ based on seniority.
Mid-level employees continue to feel the most anxious about the future and experienced the largest drop-off in confidence compared to other seniority levels, according to the data. In efforts to reduce costs and flatten out organizations, middle managers are often the first on the chopping block.
TOUCH BASE
News from the world of work
“Financial loyalty at VC firms has never been weaker,” an endowment leader recently told Forbes. It’s part of a larger movement of venture capital partners leaving blue-chip firms (think Lightspeed, Sequoia and a16z) to start their own funds. Meet venture’s new guard.
The U.S. added 143,000 non-farm jobs in January, lower than analysts estimated and the weakest January total since 2016. Unemployment, however, topped expectations, though January did mark the ninth-consecutive month of at least 4% unemployment. These numbers are more of an indicator of the job market President Trump is inheriting, rather than any impact he’s had on it thus far.
While at least 65,000 federal workers have accepted the “deferred resignation” offer from the new administration, the deadline was again paused by a federal judge on Monday until the president “responds” to the issues at the heart of the several lawsuits brought on by federal workers unions.
Google is the latest major employer to roll back its DEI initiatives. On Wednesday, the company said it would remove all of its diversity hiring targets, before removing cultural observances like Pride Month and Black History Month from Google Calendar. All in all, over a dozen major companies have pared back or removed references to DEI in their 2024 annual reports.
Amazon employees are increasingly worried about their career trajectories as the company flattens middle management roles in an effort to cut costs, according to Bloomberg. Those looking to climb the corporate ladder have been told to consider “horizontal development,” in other words, acquiring different skills with no promotion.
Are workplace feuds the new trend for increased PR? Billionaires Elon Musk and Sam Altman have been squabbling it out in the media over the funding to President Trump’s Stargate program. While their supposed feud dates back to 2015, when both Altman and Musk were among the cofounders of OpenAI, the public comments picked up again this year. Meanwhile, Super Bowl halftime performer Kendrick Lamar’s feud with Drake not only took center stage on Sunday, but has also won the rapper multiple Grammy Awards.
NUMBER TO NOTE
6+ months
That’s how long it’s taking most people to find a job, according to LinkedIn.
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QUIZ
One of Elon Musk’s DOGE bros is currently an employee at what AI company?
A. Anthropic
B. Databricks
C. OpenAI
D. None of the above
Check if you got it right here.