America's Morale Map: New BambooHR Platform Data Reveals a 40-Point Gap in Employee Happiness by State--and a Quiet Risk for Employers

Where opportunity is limited, employees stay—but happiness suffers

DRAPER, Utah, Jan. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- BambooHR^®, the leading people intelligence platform for HR, payroll, and benefits, today released a new workplace report: America's Morale Map: How Happiness Scores Unveil Hidden Labor Risks. The findings reveal a nearly 40-point gap between the states with the happiest and unhappiest employees, underscoring deep differences in how U.S. labor markets function.

The Employee Happiness by State report, based on employee Net Promoter Score^® (eNPS) data collected throughout 2025 from the BambooHR platform, analyzes worker sentiment across the United States. The findings challenge common assumptions about what drives employee satisfaction and raise a warning for employers relying too heavily on turnover as a proxy for workforce health.

"Low turnover can look like stability on the surface, but in many states it may be masking disengagement," said Jonathan Vaas, Chief Legal Officer and Head of HR of BambooHR. "Our data shows that when employees stay because they feel stuck versus fulfilled, organizations face a hidden risk of quiet quitting and burnout. Leaders need to look beyond churn to understand how their people are feeling."

Key findings from the report include:

• Employee happiness varies widely by state, with average eNPS scores ranging from the low 20s to the low 60s. The national average eNPS in 2025 was 43.
  • For context, an eNPS score above 20 is considered favorable, above 50 is excellent, and scores above 80 are considered world class.
    
    
• Rhode Island had the happiest employees in the country, with an average eNPS of 63, while neighboring New Hampshire ranked last at 24, showing geography isn't a leading factor in explaining happiness.
  
  
• Income, politics, and industry mix also do not predict employee happiness. High- and low-performing states are evenly split across historical red and blue states and span both high- and low-income regions.
  
  
• A large share of U.S. employees live in "hidden risk" states, where satisfaction is low, but turnover is also low, suggesting disengagement without mobility opportunities.

Beyond the leaderboard: Four labor-market realities

By pairing employee sentiment with turnover data, the report identifies four distinct labor-market typologies shaping how workers experience their jobs:

• Ideal stability: High satisfaction, low turnover. These states represent a best-case scenario where employees are both happy and staying put.
• Healthy dynamism: High satisfaction, high turnover. Employees feel positive but move frequently, often benefiting from opportunity-rich labor markets.
• Acute Attrition: Low satisfaction, high turnover. A small but visible group of states where dissatisfaction and churn go hand in hand.
• Hidden risk: Low satisfaction, low turnover. The largest and most consequential group, where employees are unhappy but unable or unwilling to leave.

Hidden risk states include several of the nation's largest and highest-income labor markets, such as New York, Connecticut, and California, where low turnover may give employers a false sense of security.

Why morale matters for employers

The findings suggest that employee happiness is shaped far more by labor-market dynamics - especially opportunity and mobility - than by place-based factors like regional culture, cost of living, income levels, or politics. States with similar industries and demographics can experience vastly different sentiment outcomes depending on how freely workers can move and how retention and opportunity interact.

For employers, the takeaway is clear: No single metric tells the full story. Relying on turnover or retention alone can obscure deeper issues that affect performance, wellbeing, and long-term sustainability.

"The unhappy employee who stays often becomes a drag on performance and a signal to others that problems are being tolerated," said Vaas. "When the underlying causes of disengagement are not addressed, that dynamic weakens culture, slows productivity, and creates longer-term, systemic costs that are difficult to recover from."

Access the full report and data visualizations at: http://bamboohr.com/resources/data-at-work/data-stories/ehi-state-2025

Methodology

The eNPS by State report analyzes aggregated and anonymized employee Net Promoter Score® data from thousands of US companies using BambooHR between January and December 2025. The study includes only U.S. states with at least 100 survey responses per quarter to ensure stability, resulting in all states but Mississippi being reported on. Unweighted averages were used so each state counts equally, regardless of population or response size.

Turnover metrics were sourced from BambooHR's aggregated workforce activity data, while eNPS was derived from employee survey responses. All measures were analyzed at the state level to examine relationships between labor-market dynamics and employee sentiment. For classification purposes, states were labeled as having "high" or "low" turnover based on whether their turnover rate—defined as the proportion of total employees who left during the year—fell above or below the national median.

About BambooHR Net Promoter Score® (eNPS)
BambooHR's employee Net Promoter Score® (eNPS) offering helps organizations quickly understand how employees feel about their workplace. Through regular, confidential feedback collected with a simple, standardized question, leaders can track sentiment over time, spot emerging risks, and benchmark results across teams and locations. Built directly into the BambooHR platform, eNPS pairs with workforce metrics like turnover and tenure to provide a clearer, more actionable view of engagement and retention risk.

Net Promoter, NPS, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered U.S. trademarks, and NetPromoter Score and Net Promoter System are service marks, of Bain & Company, Inc., NICE Systems, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.

About BambooHR

BambooHR® is the leading global HR software platform that sets people free to do great work™. It unifies AI-powered HR, payroll, benefits, talent management, and more than 150 integrations in a single system designed to simplify people processes and improve workforce clarity. Through its people intelligence platform, BambooHR delivers real-time insights that help organizations unlock potential and adapt as work evolves. Trusted by more than 30,000 companies across 190 countries and 50 industries, BambooHR supports millions of employees and serves as a system of record for organizations around the world.

SOURCE Bamboo HR LLC