Race, Marginalization, and Perceptions of Stress Among Workers Worldwide Post-2020

Abstract

Research shows that stressful workplace changes in 2020 disproportionately impacted historically marginalized workers. However, we need more information on enduring inequalities of stress post-2020. Thus, drawing from surveys with employees working in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and India (N = 5,242), we use logistic regression to explore how worker identities (race/ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, and social class) might matter for stress as measured through respondents' self-assessments of their own feelings of stress (“helplessness”) and states counter to stress (“self-efficacy”). Taking a sociological approach to analyze worker responses to the perceived stress scale (PSS-10), we found that historically marginalized workers (in terms of race, gender, sexual identity, and social class) reported greater feelings of stress (helplessness). However, we also found that employees identifying as racially minoritized at work and employees in India reported high self-efficacy scores on the PSS-10—a surprising relationship given that feelings of self-efficacy have been previously theorized to have an inverse relationship with stress (helplessness). Though based on a convenience sample, our research suggests that historically marginalized workers worldwide are feeling more significant amounts of stress. In addition, our findings may have implications regarding how researchers use the PSS-10 to measure stress across diverse worker groups and international contexts.