America’s Morale Map: How Happiness Scores Unveil Hidden Labor Risks

Employee happiness went up in 2025, but the joy has not spread far and wide. Worker satisfaction in the United States is unevenly distributed, with a nearly 40-point gap between the states with the happiest and those with the unhappiest employees.

A disparity in regional employee happiness isn’t too surprising, but when we start to explore the data within those gaps, a new question emerges: why are certain states doing so well, and why are other states doing so poorly?

Our analysis of state-by-state data exposes deep, structural factors and a critical hidden risk in the labor market, contradicting many assumptions around what should influence worker happiness. Read on to understand where employees are truly thriving, where they’re struggling, and what this means for your workforce.

Using Employee Net Promoter Scores^® (eNPS) data and turnover data from BambooHR, this analysis examines satisfaction scores from all fifty states, looking at thousands of eNPS results from Q1 through Q4 of 2025.

• Rhode Island had the happiest employees, with an average eNPS of 63.
• New Hampshire was home to the unhappiest employees, with an average eNPS of 24.
• Overall, US employees were moderately satisfied in 2025, with a national average eNPS of 43.
• eNPS shows no strong or consistent relationship with any single external factor at the state level (i.e., state income, political orientation, or industry mix).
• Labor dynamics reveal a hidden risk: states where unhappy employees can’t leave their jobs.

eNPS helps employers measure employee satisfaction. It consists of a numeric rating of how likely employees are to recommend the organization as a place to work. Employees select a score from 0–10, and these scores, categorized as Promoters (9 or 10), Passives (8), and Detractors (7 or below), are used to quantify how employees feel about their company.

The eNPS score is then calculated by taking the percentage of Promoters and subtracting the percentage of Detractors. The resulting score can range from -100 to +100, with higher eNPS scores indicating a higher level of employee satisfaction and loyalty. What is a good eNPS score?

• Above 0 is good.
• Above 20 is favorable.
• Above 50 is excellent.
• Above 80 is world class.

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.

If you feel like you’re living on a different planet from workers in other states, you’re not entirely wrong—the distance between US employees having a good time and a bad time can be quite vast. In 2025, the eNPS score range went from the low 20s to the low 60s.

The middle of the herd clings closely to the national average of 43.

That said, there are no clear regional patterns to employee happiness. Case in point, the nation’s happiest employees––Rhode Island––and unhappiest employees––New Hampshire––both reside in New England. Still, state eNPS results aren’t random or volatile, and most states tend to perform similarly year to year.

To understand what’s really correlating with employee happiness, we have to dig deeper into the data.

It’s worth noting that a state with the happiest employees isn’t necessarily a happy state overall. Most of the states with the happiest employees in 2025 underperform in other common happiness metrics. Other rankings put Rhode Island (#1 in eNPS) last for its volunteer rate, and Maine (#2 in eNPS) gets first place for having the highest share of adult depression.

In other words, positive employee sentiment can’t be predicted based on quality-of-life factors like personal fulfillment, community, or emotional wellbeing. Likewise, employers can’t rely solely on external environmental factors to buoy employee satisfaction.

State eNPS data points to a truth that most HR pros already know: there’s no secret recipe for employee satisfaction.

Regional differences alone don’t account for gaps in eNPS averages, and neither do other intuitive factors, like income or political leanings. High- and low-eNPS states are evenly distributed across both red and blue states, and median income levels are broadly similar across groups.

It’s also evident that a generally happy state doesn’t necessarily produce happy employees. Four of the states with the lowest eNPS averages rank in WalletHub’s top 10 happiest states overall (Idaho, Utah, Connecticut, and New Hampshire).

So if it’s not money, location, or politics that buys employee happiness—what does coincide with happy workers?

Worker satisfaction appears to be shaped by state-level labor market conditions, with turnover serving as a key contextual factor.

When you examine average eNPS scores alongside turnover data, distinctive patterns begin to emerge. These patterns can be clustered into four labor market typologies: ideal stability, acute attrition, dynamism, and hidden risk.

Ideal stability means that employees are generally happy and feel secure in their jobs. More specifically, these are states with high employee satisfaction scores and turnover proportions that fall below the national median. For employers hoping to keep both satisfaction and retention high, states with these labor market conditions are in a best-case scenario.

2025 ideally stable states (in descending order of eNPS)

Examining this group, a broad profile for the ideal stability category begins to emerge:

• High median incomes compared to the national median
• Higher rates of bachelor’s degree attainment in comparison to national rates
• Slightly higher representation of the tech industry

However, the differences in industries aren’t significant enough to fully explain why this cluster of states has hit the stability sweet spot.

Dynamism means that employees appear to be benefiting from working in a labor market with a lot of churn. Intuitive thinking may suggest that happy employees will hold onto their jobs, but the data suggests otherwise: Most states with high satisfaction scores also had high proportions of turnover.

2025 dynamic states (in descending order of eNPS)

Predominantly represented in the Southern United States, this cohort reflects a labor force focused on opportunities and growth. These are states where employees are feeling positive, but are changing roles frequently, likely in search of better opportunities.

States in this group tend to have lower median incomes than the national median, and have lower rates of bachelor’s degree attainment in comparison to national rates. Lower income and education levels may speak to why employees in these states are enthusiastically embracing chances for professional mobility.

A small cluster of states are facing acute attrition, experiencing low satisfaction and high turnover. These are problematic markets that fall into conditions that one might typically imagine for an unhappy workforce: Employees are displeased, and they’re jumping ship.

2025 acute attrition states (in descending order of eNPS)

1. Nebraska
2. Delaware
3. Missouri
4. Idaho
5. Utah
6. Oregon
7. Montana

While people leaders might associate unhappiness with high turnover, the acute attrition category is actually the least-represented labor market type in the US. Only seven states fall below the national median eNPS while also exceeding the median turnover proportion.

Due to the small group size, it’s difficult to identify any patterns that can point to why these states are struggling. Incomes and advanced degree attainments mostly hover around national rates. States experiencing acute attrition may tend to be more rural—with the exception of Delaware, these states all sit below the 50th percentile for population density.

Acute attrition states are facing significant instability in their labor market dynamics. People leaders operating within this cohort may need to conduct deeper investigations into job quality, leadership practices, and broader economic stressors to determine how they can win back their employees.

The largest cohort of states, and perhaps the most consequential category to emerge from the data, have both low satisfaction and low turnover. Employees aren’t happy, but they aren’t acting on it—these states are facing a hidden risk.

2025 hidden risk states (in descending order of eNPS)

Despite low churn, employee sentiment is relatively weak in these states, suggesting that workers may be staying in their positions for structural reasons, like a slow job market, rather than engagement. Limited mobility or high cost of living may be reducing turnover numbers—employees can’t quit their jobs, even if they want to.

This dynamic may result in diminished performance and low morale, not to mention a potential hemorrhaging of employees if job market conditions change.

Hidden risk states are deceptive. Take states such as New York or Connecticut. Looking just at their low turnover rates in the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs report, it would be easy to assume that the labor markets are ideally stable. But behind New York and Connecticut’s low turnover (and behind their high incomes and education levels, for that matter) employees are meaningfully less happy than the typical US worker.

Tellingly, hidden risk states are the biggest group for labor dynamic types. National turnover and hiring rates continued to decline in 2025, meaning that for many US employees, changing jobs is a less viable option. While unhappy workers in states experiencing acute attrition are managing to make the leap to new positions, most unsatisfied employees reside in these hidden risk states, where mobility remains low.

Employers operating in hidden risk labor markets must be more thorough to figure out how employees really feel. Beyond turnover numbers, leaders in these states will need to closely examine performance, wellbeing surveys, and eNPS data.

Relying on isolated metrics, whether it’s turnover, retention, or eNPS, to assess workforce sentiment can lead you to incomplete conclusions. For people leaders, the stakes are high: misunderstanding employee happiness can result in false confidence and costly surprises.

To understand how employees are really feeling, HR pros must combine sentiment data and structural context to interpret retention, risk, and morale. This is where comprehensive benchmarking data becomes essential. By moving beyond internal data and analyzing how your organization is performing within a broader ecosystem, you build a more complete picture of your labor market.

Employee happiness isn’t just a reflection of how people feel today. It’s an early indicator of tomorrow. Organizations that take the time to contextualize satisfaction data—rather than react to it in isolation—will be far better positioned to build workplaces that are not only stable, but genuinely sustainable.

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.

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.

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