Stress

Key Takeaways:

• Widespread stress: 33.9% of professionals report high stress (7+/10). The average is 5.01/10, making stress the norm rather than the exception.

• Gender gap: Women report 17% higher stress than men (5.57 vs 4.75) even with greater therapy use, showing pressures beyond individual interventions.

• Generational strain: Gen Z shows the highest stress (5.43, 38.6% high stress) despite fewer financial responsibilities, challenging assumptions about career progression.

• Work-driven stress: Nearly half (44.7%) cite workplace demands as their main source, proving the issue is systemic.

• Geographic variation: Stress differs sharply across cities, from 45.6% in Kolkata (also highest therapy use at 7.0%) to 29.0% in Pune, showing location matters as much as role.

Understanding Stress at Work

Stress is the body’s natural alarm system. In short bursts, it can sharpen focus, boost energy, and even improve performance. But when it becomes constant, the same system that once protected us can start to wear us down.

Research shows that sustained job strain triggers headaches, sleep problems, diminished concentration, elevated blood pressure, and weakened immunity. Over time, it’s linked to serious health issues like heart disease, stroke, and anxiety disorders.

Beyond physical harm, stress saps workplace performance. It leads to fatigue, lowered productivity, more absenteeism, and presenteeism, being at work but mentally checked out. In India, one survey found that 76 percent of workers say stress hurts their work, and nearly half say it strains their mental health.

Tight deadlines, rapid change, and the pressure to always be “on” keep stress levels elevated far beyond what our bodies are designed to handle. The result is a workforce that’s working, but often at a hidden cost to its health and long-term performance.

Stress Is the New Normal for Urban Professionals

Across India’s cities, professionals are carrying a quiet but constant mental load. Neutral industry studies and our analysis paint a consistent picture: stress is no longer an occasional spike; it’s a steady companion for much of the workforce.

In our review of 3,437 professionals, one in three reported feeling highly stressed, rating their daily pressure at 7 or more on a 10-point scale. The average score was 5.01, meaning “moderate” stress has become the everyday reality.

This reflects a deeper shift in how modern work, city living, and personal demands are shaping mental health in India’s knowledge economy.

What's Driving the Pressure

When professionals talk about what’s weighing them down, one theme overshadows the rest: work itself.

Top Sources of Stress among Urban Professionals

• Work pressure — 44.7%: Nearly half point to workplace demands as their primary source of stress.

• Financial concerns — 39.6%: Economic uncertainty troubles two in five.

• Relationship and family issues — 30.3%: Personal relationships are feeling the strain.

• Health concerns — 22.7%: Physical health challenges are adding to the mental load.

• Loneliness or lack of social support — 13.2%: Social isolation is quietly affecting many, especially in urban settings.

The fact that work pressure alone outpaces every other stressor is telling.

When almost half of professionals say their workplace is the main source of distress, the narrative shifts from individual coping skills and personal resilience to how work is structured and managed.

No amount of meditation apps or lunchtime breathing exercises can fix a system that’s fundamentally designed to push people to the edge.

The Demographic Stress Landscape

Stress Isn’t Equal: The Gender Divide

Women in India’s professional workforce are carrying a heavier mental load than men, and the difference is consistent across the board.

• 17% higher stress: On average, women’s stress scores are 17% higher than men’s.

• High stress is more common: Over 4 in 10 women rate their stress at 7 or above on a 10-point scale, compared to about 3 in 10 men.

• Gap spans every context: The pattern holds true across age groups, pay grades, and industries—signaling deeper structural causes rather than isolated circumstances.

What’s striking is that women are also more proactive in seeking help. They access therapy at roughly twice the rate of men, yet the gap persists, pointing to something bigger than individual resilience.

The pressures women face, both in professional settings and in society, are embedded in the systems around them and can’t be resolved by personal coping tools alone.

Why the Youngest Workers Feel the Heaviest Load

The numbers tell a surprising story: India’s youngest professionals, Gen Z, are the most stressed of all.

On paper, this shouldn’t be the case. They typically have fewer financial responsibilities, lighter family obligations, and greater career flexibility than older peers. Yet they report the highest stress levels in the workforce.

This reversal hints at deeper, modern pressures:

• The demanding pace and expectations of entry-level roles

• Constant comparison through social media

• Economic uncertainty clouds long-term career prospects

A mismatch between generational expectations and workplace realities

The implications for employers are significant. If stress is peaking at the very start of a career, interventions aimed only at senior executives risk missing the root of the problem. Supporting early-career employees with healthy work design, mentoring, and realistic career pathways may prevent burnout before it begins.

Where You Live Shapes How You Feel

Stress isn’t spread evenly across India’s professional hubs. Some cities create environments where the pressure is constant, while others seem to ease the load.

The gap is striking: high-stress rates are 45.6% in Kolkata compared to just 29.0% in Pune—a difference of 36%. This disparity has little to do with personal resilience and much more to do with the environment: urban infrastructure, commute times, cost of living, workplace culture, and the strength of social networks all shape daily stress.

Pune’s lower rates suggest that certain cities naturally support professional well-being, while Kolkata’s higher numbers point to systemic factors that amplify pressure. These differences hold lessons not just for employers choosing office locations, but also for policymakers thinking about the health impact of urban design.

Some Jobs Are Simply More Stressful

Not all industries put the same strain on mental health. The numbers show clear patterns:

• Consulting and healthcare top the list, with the highest stress levels—likely a mix of client demands, long hours, and the emotional labor these fields require.

• Manufacturing shows significantly lower stress despite its physical demands, possibly because schedules are more structured and boundaries between work and personal time are clearer.

• IT and software sit in the middle. While “tech burnout” is a common talking point, these roles may benefit from more predictable workflows compared to sectors where priorities can shift by the hour.

The takeaway is that stress isn’t just about how hard a job is; it’s about how predictable it is, how much control employees have over their time, and how often they can step away without guilt.

How Stress Shows Up in Daily Habits

Stress doesn’t just live in the mind; it reshapes daily routines, sleep patterns, and even the way people take care of their health. Our data reveals three clear behavioral patterns that emerge as stress rises.

Sleep: The Broken Recovery Cycle

Sleep is the body’s reset button, yet high stress makes it harder to use. Professionals under high stress report poor sleep nearly twice as often as their low-stress peers (71.4% vs. 45.2%).

The problem compounds: poor sleep weakens stress resilience, clouds thinking, and makes emotional regulation harder, feeding the very cycle that caused it. This makes sleep quality not just a wellness perk, but a cornerstone of effective stress management.

Substances as a Coping Mechanism

When stress overwhelms healthier outlets, some professionals turn to nicotine or alcohol for relief:

Nicotine Use by Stress Level:

• Low stress: 6.1% daily users

• Moderate stress: 8.1% daily users

• High stress: 10.8% daily users

Alcohol Consumption Patterns:

• Never drink: 63.9% (low stress) → 58.1% (high stress)

• Weekly drinking: 6.2% (low stress) → 9.4% (high stress)

These patterns suggest that without targeted interventions, substance use can quietly become a default coping strategy, one that often worsens health in the long run.

Physical Health Behaviors in Decline

As stress increases, healthy routines are often the first casualty:

Exercise Frequency (5+ days/week):

• Low stress: 24.4%

• High stress: 11.5%

Frequent eating out (3+ times/week):

• Low stress: 13.8%

• High stress: 21.9%

When time, energy, and mental bandwidth are consumed by stress, cooking at home and exercising feel like luxuries rather than essentials, yet these are the very habits that could help break the cycle.

Stress Without a Safety Net

Despite stress being widespread, professional mental health support remains almost untouched by most of the workforce.

Therapy and Counseling Use Among Professionals

Despite widespread stress, professional mental health support remains dramatically underutilized:

Overall Therapy/Counseling Usage:

• Never used: 82.8% — vast majority avoid professional support

• Currently in therapy: 2.7% — minimal active engagement

• Past usage: 6.4% — limited historical engagement

• Considering therapy: 8.1% — indicates unmet demand

In a population where one in three experience high stress, and nearly half say work is their primary source of pressure, just 2.7% are in therapy right now. This is one of the starkest gaps our analysis uncovered.

Even the Most Stressed Aren’t Reaching Out

Among the 1,166 professionals experiencing high stress (7+/10), the intervention gap becomes even more stark:

• 72.0% have never used therapy — majority avoid professional support despite distress

• 4.4% currently in therapy — minimal active engagement

• 9.6% used therapy in the past — limited sustained usage

• 14.1% considering therapy — potential demand signal

That means nearly three-quarters of the most distressed professionals have never sought professional help. In the Indian workplace context, this likely reflects more than just a lack of access. Stigma, concerns about how seeking help might affect professional reputation, and doubts about therapy’s effectiveness all play a role in keeping people from taking the first step.

Result: A stressed workforce navigating mental health challenges largely on its own, without the structured, evidence-based support that could prevent deeper burnout, disengagement, and turnover.

When Support Shines a Light on the Problem: The Kolkata Story

Kolkata stands out in our data for a surprising reason: it has both the highest current therapy usage (7.0%) and the highest average stress score (6.28/10).

lower? But this pattern suggests something different: higher therapy adoption may reveal the depth of the problem rather than resolve it.

In cities where mental health support is more culturally accepted, professionals may be more willing to acknowledge and report stress accurately. In other words, therapy isn’t creating stress; it’s exposing stress that might otherwise remain hidden in the data.

Income Doesn’t Guarantee Action

Therapy use does rise modestly with income, but the gaps remain striking.

Even among the highest-earning professionals making ₹40+ lakhs annually, 90.3% have never used professional therapy services.

For this group, affordability isn’t the issue. The real barriers appear to be cultural stigma, concerns about professional image, lack of time, and skepticism about therapy’s value. Economic access alone doesn’t move the needle if social and workplace norms still discourage seeking help.

How Professionals Cope with Stress

When it comes to managing pressure, most professionals turn to people they trust, not to formal programs or structured interventions.

Primary Stress Management Methods:

• Talking to friends/family: 46.1% — social support dominates

• Ignore it/bottle it up: 22.0% — avoidance strategy

• Exercise/sports: 20.5% — physical activity approach

• Mindfulness/meditation: 16.2% — contemplative practices

• Haven't found anything that helps: 15.6% — indicates coping gaps

The most common coping tool is conversation: nearly half of professionals rely on social support networks as their main way of dealing with stress. In the absence of a formal mental health infrastructure, these personal connections act as the default safety net for India’s workforce.

But the other side of the picture is concerning. More than one in five say they simply “ignore it” or bottle it up, and another 15.6% admit they haven’t found anything that works. That means over a third of professionals are either avoiding the problem entirely or feel helpless about managing it, leaving stress to quietly build over time.

The Remote Work Reality Check

Popular belief holds that working from home is less stressful. Our data tells a different story.

Remote professionals report slightly higher stress levels than their office-based peers, suggesting that flexibility alone doesn’t guarantee better mental health.

The reasons may be less about workload and more about environment:

• Isolation from colleagues

• Blurred boundaries between work and personal life

• Performance anxiety without in-person feedback

• Loss of casual social support that comes from shared spaces

The takeaway is clear: workplace mental health strategies can’t rely solely on flexible scheduling to reduce stress. They must address the social connections, structure, and cultural factors that help people feel supported, regardless of where they work.

The Current Reality: What the Data Makes Impossible to Ignore

Across India’s cities, stress has quietly shifted from being an occasional spike to an embedded feature of professional life. The patterns in our data echo a consistent message found in independent research: the problem is systemic, not individual. Workplaces themselves are the largest source of pressure.

In our study, nearly half of the professionals pointed to work demands as their primary stressor—a finding mirrored by LinkedIn’s survey of 3,881 professionals, where 55% reported feeling stressed at work, with work-life balance and financial worries leading the list. This level of pressure isn’t simply the result of weaker coping skills. It reflects how organizational culture, management styles, and the erosion of work-life boundaries are designed into the modern workplace.

Yet, despite the scale of the issue, professional support remains rare.

Only 2.7% of professionals in our sample are currently in therapy, even though one in three experiences high stress. The gap isn’t explained by affordability alone—The Economic Times notes that Indian employees often avoid formal support due to stigma, reputation concerns, and doubts about effectiveness.

The burden isn’t evenly shared.

Women report stress levels 17% higher than men, consistent with research showing they are three times more likely to seek therapy than their male colleagues. Younger professionals, too, report disproportionately high stress despite fewer life-stage pressures, suggesting that workplace norms and generational expectations may be amplifying early-career strain.

Geography plays its part.

Our findings show a 36% difference in high-stress rates between cities, a pattern reinforced by Oracle and Workplace Intelligence research, which found Indian professionals reporting higher life and work impact than peers in other countries. The urban environment, commutes, infrastructure, cost of living, and social support networks act as either a buffer or an amplifier for workplace pressure.

And the effects ripple outward. High stress consistently undermines healthy behaviours: sleep declines, substance use increases, and exercise routines falter. This creates feedback loops where the very habits that protect against stress become harder to maintain.

In this context, it’s telling that nearly half of professionals say their main coping strategy is talking to friends or family, while over a third either avoid dealing with stress or feel nothing helps. Social networks, not formal systems, remain the primary mental health infrastructure for India’s workforce.

Sources:

• Economic Times. (2021, October 28). 55% of India’s employed professionals report feeling stressed: Survey. The Economic Times – HR World. https://hr.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/workplace-4-0/employee-wellbeing/55-of-indias-employed-professionals-report-feeling-stressed-survey/86836089

• Frontiers in Global Women’s Health. (2025, February 11). Workplace stress and gender-related challenges in India. Frontiers. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/global-womens-health/articles/10.3389/fgwh.2025.1597409/full

• MedBound Times. (2023, October 25). Indian corporate women 3x more likely to seek therapy. MedBound Times. https://www.medboundtimes.com/fitness-and-wellness/indian-corporate-women-3x-more-likely-seek-therapy

• Oracle & Workplace Intelligence. (2021, October 7). AI at work: 2021 global study. Oracle. https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/oracle-future-of-work-ai-2021-100721/

• Healthcare Radius. (2023, August 22). Critical levels of workplace stress and burnout among Indian employees: Experts. Healthcare Radius. https://www.healthcareradius.in/features/wellness/critical-levels-of-workplace-stress-and-burnout-among-indian-employees-experts