One of the more honest holiday cards I received this year read: “2025: The longest decade since 2020.” It landed because it felt true. Not just because of what has happened over the last year, but because of how much people have been carrying, often quietly and all at once.
Last spring, we published an initial snapshot of Americans’ stress, trying to name the “weight we’re carrying” behind closed doors while still showing up to work, school, family dinners, and community life. The goal at the time was simple: make the private texture of stress visible, and create a baseline we could return to.
Since then, Murmuration’s Civic Pulse has invited more than 150,000 people to describe, in their own words, what causes stress in their lives. Reading through those responses is a humbling exercise, especially when you pause to imagine what they represent at scale:
When almost four-in-ten of Americans say finances are a major source of stress, that translates to roughly one hundred million people worrying about bills, debt, rent, groceries, or whether their money will stretch far enough.
When nearly two-in-ten Americans are dealing with physical or mental health challenges, that is fifty million people managing symptoms, treatment decisions, insurance coverage, and the uncertainty of not knowing how their health will hold up day to day.
When more than one-in-ten say they are caring for aging parents or relatives, that is tens of millions of people managing health systems, appointments, and emotional labor alongside everything else.
So here we are returning to the data on stress to understand which parts of our experience reflect short-term strain, and which point to something more durable.
The Constant Stress of Daily Life
Over the past year, Americans’ overall stress levels have remained remarkably consistent. Month after month, the share of people reporting little, moderate, or high stress barely moves, even as events, seasons, and headlines change. There are small fluctuations at the margins, but the general pattern remains:
When you actually listen to what people are facing in their daily lives, you immediately discover that stress is rarely singular. People are not just worried about money or work or health. They are worried about money and work and caregiving and time and the interaction between them. Some respondents listed five or six separate worries. More than a thousand wrote just one word: everything.
Unequivocally, one source of stress stands apart from the rest: money.
Across 2025, 36% of Americans cite financial strain as a stressor and it remains about double the next most common concern, jobs and career at 18%. Financial strain is mentioned more often than family relationships (17%), physical health (11%), and mental health (6%) combined. The ranking is familiar (see prior post), but the persistence matters. Financial pressure is steady and sets the emotional baseline for daily life.
But financial stress is not evenly distributed. It follows a steep and unforgiving gradient.
Among those who describe their level of financial comfort as struggling, 61% say financial strain is a source of stress. For those getting by, that figure drops to 40%. Among people who describe themselves as comfortable, it falls to 16%, and among the prosperous, just 7%.
The difference is not subtle. It is the difference between money being one concern among many and money being the frame through which everything else is experienced.
That same financial divide is also apparent in how intensely people experience stress. The majority of people (79%) who are financially struggling report experiencing a moderate or great deal of stress in their lives. Among those who are comfortable, that share is closer to a third (31%), and among the prosperous, it drops to less than a quarter (22%). Financial strain is not just more common at lower income levels; it is heavier, more constant, and harder to compartmentalize.
One individual summed it up succinctly:
“The prices of everything have gone up drastically.... My wages are the same. The math does not math.” – 53, female, Box Elder, South Dakota
The Acute Stress of the Moment
Across every month, certain stressors never drop out of view: financial strain, work pressure, family responsibilities, and health concerns. But one of the advantages of asking people, in their own words, what’s stressing them is that it also lets us see how stress moves with the world.
Early in 2025, stress language was shaped by national politics and prominent news stories. February sees a spike around Elon Musk and related political references, which quickly gives way in March and April to concerns about the economy, costs, markets, tariffs, and the stock market. By late spring and summer, global events show up: spikes in world and war language in June align with international instability and conflict entering the news cycle. In the fall, stress sharpens again around governance and institutional uncertainty. October is marked by a clear rise in references to a government shutdown, followed by renewed concern about finances and family strain, including economic uncertainty. Now, at the start of 2026, stress language is reflecting attention to immigration enforcement, global unrest, and ongoing geopolitical conflict and other issues that dominate headlines and signal institutional action, uncertainty, or disruption.
What is perhaps most striking, though, is who stresses about global or national concerns versus daily life. For roughly three in four people, stress remains rooted in daily concerns, and only a small minority (9%) frame it in political terms. But this stress isn't evenly distributed. Those who report being financially comfortable or prosperous are more likely (+5pp) to name global or national concerns, while those struggling or getting by are more likely (+8pp) to point to daily pressures. This concentration of stress on daily financial concerns makes a difference; financial comfort is one of the strongest ways to predict engagement in civic life.
Final Thoughts
Seen this way, the data offer a grounding reminder as we head into a new year. Stress is not evenly distributed, but it is widespread. At any given moment, a large share of the country is carrying something heavy, whether or not it is visible from the outside. That reality does not excuse harm or erase responsibility, but it does call for a baseline of empathy in how we approach one another and the expectations we set for public life.
It also raises a set of increasingly urgent questions:
What does civic and community life look like when financial strain sets the emotional baseline for so many people?
How should institutions design participation, support, and engagement when large segments of the public are operating under chronic stress?
And what would change if fewer Americans were living with the constant sense that one disruption could tip everything out of balance?
The data suggest a country that is carrying a great deal, and that has been carrying it for some time.
The stress persists. So do we.
Murmuration is a non-profit that organizes a network of partners and equips them with the insights, tools, and services needed to help communities build and activate the power to transform America into a nation where everyone thrives. murmuration.org
Instead of empathy, I suggest that what we need is solidarity.
Empathy privatises a structural problem. The solution to "financial strain" is not empathy or better institutional design. It is the redistribution of wealth, the decommodification of essential services, and the empowerment of workers and everyday people.
Great post. Stress adds to cognitive load in all areas and contributes to cognitive load inequality.