NEW DATA ON EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, WELLBEING, AND THE EMOTIONAL RECESSION
Global emotional intelligence scores have declined for four consecutive years.
From 2019 to 2023, global average emotional intelligence scores declined 5.54%; scores on every individual competency also dropped.
The world has entered an “emotional recession” – characterized by low wellbeing and high burnout.
Wellbeing scores declined for the past four years, dropping 5.3%.
Gen Z faces a mental and emotional health crisis fuelled by loneliness and social isolation. In the workplace, 53.7% of Gen Z scored in the low satisfaction category – signalling especially high risk for disengagement and burnout for younger workers.
A striking gender divide has emerged in the post-pandemic era. Starting in 2021, women’s emotional intelligence and 75% of women’s life success factor scores rebounded, even as men’s scores continued multi-year declines. While lagging wellbeing is a cause for concern, the overall trend for women is positive.
Workplaces across industries face rapid change in the post-pandemic era, due to a range of challenges including the transition to hybrid work and the rise of AI. From 2021 to 2023, burnout increased in 65% of workplace sectors in the study.
Emotional intelligence scores are not evenly distributed throughout the world. Oceania has the highest average emotional intelligence, and Asia the lowest. All seven global regions, however, have unique strengths and opportunities.
In the last global economic recession, the Great Recession of 2008-09, the world lost more than $2 trillion in economic growth – a drop of nearly 4 percent, according to Moody’s Analytics.1 Fifteen years later, we’ve entered a global emotional recession on the level of the Great Recession. Since 2019, global emotional intelligence has declined 5.5% and wellbeing 5.3%. Burnout levels increased in 65% of workplace sectors and global averages dropped on all 8 core emotional intelligence skills measured by the Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence assessment (SEI).