Most white-collar workers are suffering from increased anxiety as the New Year arrives, especially those who consider the past year wasted, a recent report suggests.
51job.com, one of the country's leading Web-based headhunters, surveyed 3,633 office workers over the Internet about their mood at work and its causes at the year-end. Most of the respondents were between ages of 18 and 29.
More than 91 percent of the office workers surveyed felt anxious these days as they didn't see any remarkable achievements made during the past year.
Over 70 percent of those who said they felt anxious claimed they are fed up with their work or losing confidence in their career development.
"I even suffered sleepless nights and will easily lose my temper these days when thinking of the past fruitless working year," said Maggie Wang, who works as a secretary at a local Japanese trade company.
The depressing mood is especially prominent among ordinary employees, who accounted for nearly 65 percent of those claiming to feel anxious. Only 19 percent of mid-level managers said they felt anxious about wasting the last year, and only 1.7 percent of senior managers surveyed said they are feeling stress.
The report also indicated that young employees who have only been on the job for one or two years are more likely to be anxiety-stricken than veteran employees, as the number of young sufferers is three times that of people with at least six years of work experience.
"Anxiety is no longer rare among modern office workers who are under heavy working pressure, but things will get worse when everybody is faced with an annual evaluation at the year-end," said Xiao Yu, an analyst at 51job.com.
Since it is tough for employees in low positions to see the results of their contributions, it is natural for them to feel anguished and depressed when looking back at the past year, analysts said.
Twenty-one percent of survey respondents blame the past fruitless year on their own laziness and lack of an effective work plans.
(Shanghai Daily January 1, 2005)
