In a note on Friday, Chief Economic Adviser Vicky Redwood said AI still has potential to boost productivity but is bearish about the amount of revenue that can be generated to sustain the rate of investment.

A handful of hyperscalers are expected to spend $800 billion this year, double from a year ago, and invest an estimated $1 trillion or more in 2027. Many forecasts assume annual capital expenditures will remain above $1 trillion for several years.

But Redwood calculated that annual AI-related revenues earned from external customers would have to explode by 10-fold by 2030 to justify all that spending. While that’s possible, it implies a much more severe and rapid disruption to the economy than currently seen, such major displacement of existing businesses and labor.

As a result, she thinks investment will continue to rise next year but at a slower pace—then fall outright in 2028 by around 10%.

Given that higher AI investment added 0.3 percentage point to U.S. GDP growth last year, a capex slowdown should trim that much from its recent growth rate, Redwood estimated, and a 10% capex drop might take 0.1% off GDP.

That’s actually just a slight haircut, especially compared to more AI-dependent economies in Asia. Taiwan’s real GDP growth next year should be around 3 percentage points lower, and South Korea’s should be 1 point lower, with a further drag in 2028.

Meanwhile, the stock market will price in the looming AI capex drop even sooner. Redwood expects the S&P 500 will be 12% below its current level by the end of 2027, putting it 17% off its early-October peak.

“We expect considerably larger falls in tech-heavy indices,” she added. “A tightening of financial conditions driven by factors such as higher energy prices or term premia could also make financing investment hard.”

Lower stock prices will also feed into the economy via the wealth effect, which fuels consumer spending. The market’s rally over the past year lifted GDP by around 0.4%, according to Redwood, so a stock selloff should produce an economic drag of similar scale.

Despite the warnings about capex, GDP and stocks, AI will continue to work its way into the economy and improve productivity, helped by the infrastructure that’s already been built and the new investment that’s on the way, albeit at a slower rate.

In fact, capex could remain relatively high even after declining, Redwood pointed out, as hyperscalers keep spending to replace depreciating equipment, exploit economies of scale, and stay ahead in the “winner-takes-most” AI race. They could also spread out any investment declines over several years instead of all at once.

“The bottom line for the U.S. economy is that we expect slower GDP growth in 2028, but not a major downturn,” Redwood wrote. “Admittedly, recessions have sometimes followed previous capex booms and busts, including in the early 2000s after the dotcom bust. However, a fall in capital spending alone has generally not been sufficient to cause a recession.”

At the same time, AI adoption should continue to expand, boosting productivity and supporting output growth. Redwood estimated that AI will increase U.S. productivity by about 1% per year for several years.

She does not expect an abrupt collapse in AI investment or a severe economic downturn when the boom ends.

“Rather, we expect investment to adjust to a more sustainable pace, with sufficient capacity still being added to support further growth in AI usage,” she concluded.

Sobering research released in October 2025 from the think tank Resolution Foundation shows that for aspirational Brits looking to move up the wealth ladder, the average worker would need to save their earnings for 52 years to raise £1.3 million ($1.7 million). That’s the amount needed to move from the middle and become as wealthy as the richest 10%.

And it gets worse: That’s with zero bills being paid.

“Wealth gaps in Britain are now so large that a typical full-time employee saving all their earnings across their entire working life would still not be able to reach the top of the wealth ladder,” wrote Molly Broome, formerly a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation and the lead author of the report.

And for those who happen to be born in the working class, the odds are increasingly stacked against them. 

“Wealth mobility in Britain is low. People that start life wealthy tend to stay wealthy, and vice versa,” Broome added.

As the saying goes, money makes money. The report revealed the key driver of widening inequality is the “passive” gains. Essentially, those who bought property and invested their money have seen their wealth balloon since 2010.

Workers in the U.S. would need to save for 70 years to unlock the American Dream 

As inflation squeezes workers in a cost-of-living vise, paired with a job crisis, and AI threatening to make it even worse, the salary it takes to be considered rich keeps climbing further out of reach. And the issue is transatlantic.

Even in the U.S., workers say they’d need at least $2.3 million to feel rich. Meanwhile, separate research highlights they’d need a staggering $4.4 million to achieve the American Dream—the house in the suburbs, two children, an annual vacation, and a new car in the driveway. Achieving those milestones would cost over $1 million more than most Americans will make in their lifetime, according to an Investopedia calculation.

With median weekly earnings of full-time workers averaging $1,232, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it would take over 35 years of full-time work to feel rich with $2.3 million in the bank. That’s before a single bill is paid, and still $2.1 million short of affording the American Dream.

It would take the average American worker nearly 70 years without a single expense being paid to reach that $4.4 million benchmark—far longer than most people will work in a lifetime. And that’s without even considering inflation, any unexpected financial shocks, or automation’s impact on the future of work.

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on December 23, 2025.

Read more about success from Fortune’s Orianna Rosa Royle:

After seeing European companies experiment with shorter workweeks on social media, he launched a 90-day pilot in January 2023, giving employees Fridays off without cutting their salaries. By April, he had made the schedule permanent.

Nearly four years later, Brick’s revenue has grown dramatically. According to figures the company provided, revenue jumped 73% in 2023, another 39% in 2024, and 8% in 2025. Compounded, that’s roughly 160% growth in three years.

Kurtz believes some of that success traces back to the four-day workweek, though he doesn’t claim the schedule alone explains it. He bets that giving employees a reason to stay makes the company more efficient and more competitive, even as workplace researchers say the four-day week has faded from the hybrid-work conversation and some leaders who tried it have dialed it back.

How Brick’s four-day week works

At Brick, employees work four nine-hour days, Monday through Thursday. That’s a 36-hour week, four hours short of the traditional 40, with paid lunch breaks included. Employees are still considered full-time and eligible for benefits.

That puts Brick between a compressed 40-hour week and the 32-hour model some researchers advocate. At Fortune‘s Workplace Innovation Summit in May, University of Georgia psychology professor Malissa Clark argued that the point of a four-day week is to cut eight hours, not cram 40 hours into four days.

Brick’s schedule also contrasts with the long hours common in the related public relations field. Muck Rack’s State of PR 2026 report found that 55% of PR professionals surveyed had worked more than 40 hours the previous week.

Social media doesn’t exactly take weekends off, but Kurtz said clients have been surprisingly understanding of the arrangement, and most content shoots, meetings and other work can be planned ahead of time.

Employees still occasionally handle small tasks on Fridays or weekends, which he described as taking “five minutes here and there.” He estimated that more serious emergencies requiring several hours of work happen roughly once or twice a quarter. In those cases, nonexempt employees are eligible for overtime if they work more than 40 hours in a week, and the company brings in freelance contractors when needed.

The rule he goes by: Don’t bury employees in work.

Brick served 56 clients in all of 2022, compared with 85 in just the first half of 2026, according to Kurtz. A social media manager typically handles six or seven clients, with seven the upper limit.

Once employees approach that threshold, Brick hires more people instead of piling more work on existing staff. That’s one reason revenue has grown so quickly. It’s also why profit margins have stayed roughly unchanged since 2022, Kurtz said, as payroll has risen alongside revenue.

Employees also work from home most of the time. Only one of the four working days requires a trip to the office.

Why Kurtz treats retention as a growth strategy

For Kurtz, keeping employees happy is as much a business strategy as a cultural one.

“If I can keep people here longer, and they like their job, and they’re communicating with similar people all the time, it just makes the business a lot more efficient,” he told Fortune.

Experienced employees don’t need everything spelled out. Kurtz said colleagues who have worked together for years can sometimes resolve something in a two-minute hallway conversation that might otherwise take 30 minutes.

He believes that efficiency translates into better client relationships and, ultimately, more business. Of the 20 new leads Brick received in October, 16 came from referrals, according to Kurtz.

The company’s resignation numbers suggest employees are increasingly willing to stay. Brick recorded six voluntary departures in 2022, before the schedule change, compared with two in 2023, two in 2024, three in 2025, and none so far in 2026, according to figures provided to Fortune. Its workforce has grown from 15 employees at the end of 2022 to 25 today.

Asked whether Brick could have achieved the same success with employees onsite five days a week and working frequent overtime, Kurtz said, “No, I really don’t… I think people would leave Brick Media for like a $5,000 raise.” He said he knows some employees have had better offers and chosen to stay.

“People have a hard time leaving the four-day schedule once they experience it, because they start to realize that life is way more than just the salary,” he said.

It’s the same case ThredUp CEO James Reinhart made on Clark’s panel at the Fortune summit, where he warned that companies sticking with five-day weeks will lose the competition for top talent.

An employee’s view: same work, fewer days

For Andrea Echeverry, Brick’s director of client experience, who has been with the company since before the schedule change, switching to four days hasn’t meant doing less work.

“I think we have just found more ways to be more efficient with our time,” she told Fortune.

She doesn’t mind squeezing the same workload into four longer days. In fact, she prefers it. Echeverry said “hustle culture has played a role,” explaining that people her age are still willing to work long hours but take a different approach to the traditional “work hard, play hard” mentality.

She is a working mother whose husband also works full-time, and Fridays are now for spending time with her child and running personal errands.

To Echeverry, it’s part of a generational shift in attitudes toward work. Rather than accept traditional workplace arrangements simply because previous generations did, she believes younger workers are more willing to question the norm.

She isn’t alone in ranking balance over pay. In Randstad’s global Workmonitor 2026 survey, 46% of workers named work-life balance as their main reason for staying in their job, compared with 23% who cited competitive pay and benefits.

“We’re sort of like redefining work-life balance,” she said.

Kurtz’s advice to other CEOs

Kurtz doesn’t think every company needs to give employees Fridays off. Instead, he advises other CEOs to “think about what would make your employees want to work at your company.”

“I just think that there’s a happy middle ground where you can still have a really good life and a really good business,” he said. “And if you can also extend that to your employees, then it’s not only a feel-good thing for the culture; it’s actually a business advantage that your competitors won’t have.”

On a busy election day, the Alabama Public Service Commission requested that Alabama Power voluntarily stop billing customers, effective immediately, for television commercials and other ads it buys to promote various aspects of its business.

Alabama Power is the largest electricity provider in Alabama, with territory covering about two-thirds of the state. Though it is a monopoly, the company spends millions each year on advertising, touting its reliability, customer service and other aspects of its business. 

In recent months, the company has launched a series of television commercials touting a rate freeze it announced late last year amid heavy criticism over rising electricity prices. 

A state law passed earlier this year will prohibit Alabama Power from including the costs of those commercials in customers’ electric bills, meaning the powerful utility will have to find all of the dollars in corporate profits. But the new law won’t take effect until 2029.

Currently, Alabama Power is allowed to bill customers for half of its non-public safety advertising costs. 

During Tuesday’s meeting, PSC President Cynthia Lee Almond moved to “request” that Alabama Power voluntarily begin excluding those costs immediately.

“I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t go ahead and take steps now to begin that process, rather than waiting until Jan. 1, 2029,” Almond said during the meeting.

Almond then made her motion, which was not on the meeting agenda, but came after the regular report from the commission’s electricity division. 

“I move that the commission request that Alabama Power consent to exclude all advertising expenses from retail rate setting until after Dec. 31, 2028, when the new law takes effect,” Almond said. “Assuming Alabama Power consents, this interim measure would be reflected in its [Rate Stabilization and Equalization] filings for 2027 and 2028.” 

Commissioners Jeremy Oden and Chris Beeker IV voted yes after a brief discussion. 

According to the company filings with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Alabama Power spent more than $6 million in general advertising last year, roughly $4 per customer. It’s unclear from the federal filing how much of that total was passed on to customers or how much might be impacted by the new prohibition. 

Alabama Power did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Daniel Tait, executive director of Energy Alabama, said the move was a boon to Alabama Power customers, who faced some of the highest electric bills in the country in recent years. 

“We are grateful for the leadership of President Almond and the full commission for acting to end customers paying for Alabama Power’s advertising,” Tait said. “Once in place, Alabama will have one of the strongest customer protections in the nation on this front.”

This will be among the last actions of the commission under its current construction before a major overhaul takes effect. 

In January, the commission will expand from three members to seven. Outgoing Gov. Kay Ivey has appointed four new commissioners, who will take office in January, including the PSC’s two first-ever Black members. 

Oden and Beeker will also leave the commission in January after being defeated in Republican primaries. Cullman County Sheriff Matt Gentry will take Oden’s Place 1 seat, and former state auditor and PSC Commissioner Jim Zeigler will replace Beeker in Place 2. 

Zeigler, a perennial candidate in Alabama across several decades, will return to the commission 48 years after leaving the PSC. He served one term from 1975-1979, during an era of skyrocketing energy costs and protracted political battles over electric rates between Alabama Power and then-Gov. George Wallace. 

Almond will be the sole remaining member of the current commission. 

The new seven-member commission will be overseen by the state’s first secretary of energy, who will be selected by Gov.-elect Tommy Tuberville. The new secretary will set the commission agenda, and overruling the secretary will require a vote of five of seven commissioners. 

Tuberville has not yet announced his pick for secretary of energy. The only statutory requirement is that the secretary “must have experience in utility regulation or energy policy or a related field.”

On Friday, Spain’s agriculture ministry ordered farmers to hold back 12% of their production until the end of September 2027, requiring them to store supplies on their farms or at third-party facilities.

“The measure aims to ensure farmers’ profitability and also to protect the interests of olive oil buyers,” it said, according to the Financial Times, adding that “greater stability to the market” will benefit producers and consumers.

While the move is unprecedented, the European Union allows olive oil supplies to be held back, unless it leads to excessive market distortion.

The current harvest season for so-called “liquid gold” began in September, and favorable weather this past spring promises to reverse years of drought and heat that kept olive production low.

This season, Spanish olive oil production is projected to jump 23% to 1.6 millions tons, marking the fourth-largest harvest ever. The agriculture ministry seeks to keep 188,000 tons off the market.

But expectations for more supply have already sent olive oil prices down. At mills in Andalusia, they averaged 2.93 euros per kilogram last weekend, down about 15% in about two months.

The olive oil industry has pushed back against the government’s attempt to prop up prices, pointing out the market is global while the order only applies to Spanish producers.

Kyle Holland, senior analyst at commodity data firm Expana, also noted that olive oil degrades over time, telling that FT that after several months in storage ”very quickly that olive oil is not going to be extra virgin anymore.”

He added that top olive oil buyers already have hefty supplies, so ordering farmers to store away some production would have little immediate impact on prices. 

Spain isn’t the only country dealing with wild swings in key commodities.

The Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, which oversees Canada’s strategic syrup reserve, recently warned the stockpile will be completely empty by February.

While new supplies will continue to be produced, the reserve won’t be able to help ease any wobbles in output, which depends heavily on the weather and can be volatile.

Demand has increased in recent years as producers have diversified to more market beyond the U.S., but last year saw an especially big spike after President Donald Trump launched his global trade war.

To get ahead of anticipated tariffs, Americans rushed to buy up Canadian syrup supplies. As a result, total syrup exports jumped nearly 16% last year, up from 9% growth in 2024.

Meanwhile, the Iran war has forced oil-consuming countries around the world to drain crude stockpiles. In the U.S., the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has fallen to the lowest level since 1982.

Elsewhere, Japan has a rice reserve that had to be drawn down last year as prices soared amid bad weather and looming threats from natural disasters that sparked panic buying. But this year, Japan has already swung to a record surplus.

And China tapped its strategic pork reserve in 2019 after an outbreak of swine fever sent prices higher. But this year, prices have slumped as the anemic consumer economy has weighed on demand while the government’s prior encouragement to boost production has now resulted in oversupply.

Pork prices have plunged 39% over the last four years. To help prop up the market, China has repeatedly purchased pork for the strategic reserve.

In an interview with actor Terry Crews that In-N-Out posted online, she was asked how the company will retain its California DNA as it expands to more states around the country.

“This is where we started. It’s where we are now, and it’s where we will always be,” Snyder replied.

Her grandparents opened the first In-N-Out in Southern California in 1948, and the company has gradually expanded to other parts of the state—and to other parts of the country.

While far from being the biggest chain, it retains a cult following that has helped its expansion as people who moved out of California make pilgrimages when restaurants open in new states.

But Snyder, who grew up in Northern California, revealed last year that she and her family were moving to Tennessee, saying that raising kids was difficult in the state and that “doing business is not easy” there either.

That sparked fears In-N-Out might leave California, prompting the burger heiress—who is worth an estimated $7.3 billion—to clarify that her departure from the state doesn’t mean the company will too.

In a video posted to her Instagram page last year, Snyder told followers: “We’re not leaving California, or leaving our roots behind. Each one of our locations is here to stay.”

Still, there has been a corporate exodus from California to states like Texas, where Elon Musk has relocated the headquarters for Tesla and SpaceX.

In-N-Out has also clashed with state authorities, such as when it refused to comply with officials and request that customers must show proof of vaccination to make purchases during the pandemic.

And the company reluctantly raised prices after California imposed higher minimum wages for fast-food workers in 2024.

But during her latest interview, Snyder addressed the fears about In-N-Out, which maintains headquarters in California and Tennessee.

“There were rumors about ‘they’re gonna close all their California stores.’ I’m like what where did this even come from? That’s unimaginable. I can’t even imagine that — dumbest business decision ever,” she said.

Snyder added that In-N-Out continues to grow in California, with “lots of stores” slotted for the other cities in the state.

At the same time, the company has expanded to Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Colorado, Idaho, Washington and Tennessee. Snyder suggested that Mississippi, Arkansas, and Oklahoma are under consideration, with New Mexico also in the works.

But she insisted the company is taking a slow and steady approach to growth that won’t compromise on the quality of its food her grandparents’ values, adding that In-N-Out won’t be able to accommodate every request to open a new location.

As for her own family’s relocation to Tennessee, Snyder described it as “kind of a God thing” and said she originally wanted to move to Colorado because she loves the mountains.

But her husband floated the idea of going to Tennessee instead. While they already had made plans, she recalled that “something just kind of clicked.”

“I felt it and then started looking at it, just praying, and I’m like ‘I think you’re right. I think that’s where we’re supposed to go,’” Snyder said.

Berkshire’s class B stock is up 13.6% so far this year, beating the S&P 500’s 7.8% gain. The outperformance has come as Wall Street rotates out of once high-flying tech stocks that rode the AI boom. Since Oct. 1 alone, Berkshire stock has soared 14% while the S&P has fallen about 4%.

That mirrors other years that saw major market upheaval. Most recently, Berkshire gained 4% in 2022 when the Federal Reserve launched an aggressive rate-hiking campaign that sent the broad market index down 18%.

Still, Berkshire’s own closely followed portfolio hasn’t been immune to recent market swings. According to its third-quarter earnings report filed on Saturday, investment gains plunged 46% from a year earlier to $9.4 billion.

Berkshire’s top stock holdings remained Alphabet, American Express, Apple, Bank of America and Coca-Cola during the quarter.

While a more detailed filing later this month will reveal its precise moves, the quarterly earnings report showed that Berkshire bought $2.4 billion of stocks during the period and sold some $2.8 billion.

The company grew its stake in “commercial, industrial, and other” equities by $2.3 billion on a cost basis, and cut its stake in “banks, insurance and finance” by $400 million.

Meanwhile, CEO Greg Abel, who took over from Buffett at the start of this year, continued to draw down Berkshire’s massive cash pile and accelerated stock repurchases.

It repurchased $9.6 billion of its stock in the third quarter, more than double the pace in the second quarter. And in the first four weeks of the fourth quarter, Berkshire bought back about $2 billion more in stock.

With a broad array of firms under the Berkshire umbrella, the conglomerate remains focused on traditional businesses like railroad BNSF, Brooks running shoes, See’s candies, and Forest River RVs.

Abel added to that strategy in July, when he agreed to buy home builder Taylor Morrison for $6.8 billion. That broke a long drought without any major acquisitions as Buffett bemoaned the lack of good bargains.

Berkshire’s holdings in the traditional economy have paid off. In the third quarter, its railroad, energy and manufacturing businesses delivered strong profits, though insurance underwriting tumbled.

That’s as the AI boom has not only supercharged the tech sector but also industries that benefit from the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on data center construction as well as electrical grid upgrades.

As a result, U.S. GDP has been running hot, expanding 3.4% in the third quarter, accelerating from 2.2% in the second quarter.

But the Democratic sweep of gubernatorial races in data center hot spots like Texas, Ohio and Georgia is expected to slow down the AI buildout and the overall economy.

“We called it the air-bed-and-breakfast,” he told Fortune in 2017 at a World’s Greatest Leaders event.

Chesky and Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia were hooked on the idea of making money and meeting new friends through their makeshift accommodations, so they opened their home to three guests: “What if you could book someone’s home the way you could book a hotel anywhere in the world?” Chesky said about their inspiration. They launched Airbnb with Gebbia’s former roommate Nathan Blecharczyk in 2008.

Chesky’s social-worker parents in upstate New York (he was born in Albany) told him to pursue a high-paying career, but much to their chagrin he went to art school instead, at the famous Rhode Island School of Design.

“I’m going to become an artist,” Chesky recalls telling his mom, to which she responded: “You somehow managed to pick the only job in the world that pays less than a social worker. You’ll get paid nothing.”

Today, Chesky doesn’t have to worry as much.

Airbnb has a market capitalization of $112 billion, above its level from before the pandemic, which threatened its very survival as a business. The company lost 80% of its business in the first months of the pandemic, and Chesky reorganized it in a scramble for survival.

How was Chesky’s business ethos shaped by his creative background?

Though Chesky’s creativity is what birthed (and saved) Airbnb, it also meant business veterans did not initially take him seriously.

Chesky’s design background was at first a hindrance to a budding Airbnb. While looking for $150,000 to fund an estimated 10% of the company, Chesky met with over 20 potential investors, all of whom turned him down.

“Joe and I were designers, and as far as they were concerned, designers didn’t start companies,” Chesky said. “We didn’t look like a tech founder, which is ridiculous because I don’t think you should ever hire somebody because they look like something else. You want a new thing.”

Investors didn’t take an interest in Airbnb until it began designing presidential-candidate-themed cereal boxes, which eventually got the attention of Paul Graham, founder of startup accelerator Y Combinator.

“Creative companies are companies that tap into a sense of imagination,” Chesky told Time. “That they might come up with new breakthrough ideas, that people that were only beholden to near-term measurable outcomes won’t ever have.”

How has Airbnb navigated challenges?

Success at Airbnb has been a double-edged sword. Explosive growth has forced the company to refocus at times. 

During the pandemic, Chesky told Fortune in 2023, he even opened his own home as an Airbnb to better understand the host experience and lived in various Airbnbs across the country for six months, where he discovered inconsistent and unnecessary practices across hosts, including complicated rent agreements.

Airbnb still faces challenges as waves of short-term rental regulations in New York and across Europe, where cities are implementing phase-outs, prohibiting rentals for less than 30 days, or no longer renewing tourist apartment licenses, for example. In the U.S., housing advocates have fought against Airbnb, according to the AP, claiming short-term rentals have essentially become hotels.

 Airbnb has pushed back against regulations, saying that short-term rental bans would limit affordable accommodations for travelers.

Last month, Airbnb implemented a new “reasonable house rules and requests” policy, where the company has stopped asking guests to “complete tasks that require significant effort or time, or would typically be performed by a cleaner,” such as stripping the bed, washing and putting away dishes, or taking trash offsite. The new policy, which will go into effect on rentals booked on or after Nov. 20, has drawn pushback as hosts threaten to boycott or hike cleaning fees, and been a pleasant surprise to customers.

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on Jan. 24, 2024.

More on Airbnb:

• Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky says ‘founder mode’ cost him almost his entire executive team: ‘They left or they didn’t want to work for me’
• Airbnb guests no longer have to wash dishes or strip beds. Furious hosts are threatening to boycott and raise cleaning fees
• Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky warns two types of people won’t survive the AI era: ‘pure people managers’ and workers who resist change

Researchers define workplace bullying as harmful acts of mistreatment between people that go beyond incivility and cross the line to intentionally cause harm. In other words, it’s behavior any reasonable person would know isn’t OK.

Junior faculty and staff faced more workplace bullying from peers. Faculty members and staff who are Black, Indigenous or people of color were targeted more frequently.

Senior faculty were more likely than younger educators to report being bullied by students over grades. Although bullying usually runs down the chain of power – for example, from a boss to an employee – grade bullying flips that. Researchers call it contrapower harassment – when someone with less formal power targets someone with more.

More than 30% of adult workers in the U.S. and Canada experience bullying, harassment and sexual abuse in the workplace at any given time, harming both individuals and organizations.

That rate is more than double in academia, where bullying rates are as high as 68% at some institutions, far exceeding those in general workplaces and aligning with high-stress fields like emergency services, according to our peer-reviewed findings published in the October 2026 Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Practice.

Why it matters

Academic bullying undermines both the well-being of staff and faculty and the integrity of higher education institutions.

Thirty percent of our survey respondents reported that students pressured them for a better grade. Students’ tactics included threatening grade appeals, malicious complaints, negative online reviews, emotional manipulation and intimidation. Women and minority faculty are particularly affected. Over time, the bullying creates a toxic environment that damages relationships between faculty and students and hurts the quality of education for everyone.

Such pressure could result in mental health issues like anxiety and depression, decreased job satisfaction and reduced productivity. These dynamics not only affect individual faculty members but can also lead to long-term damage to the reputation of institutions and negatively impact students’ educational experiences.

How we did our work

We surveyed 189 faculty and staff at colleges and universities in Canada, the U.S. and U.K.

Anonymous respondents reported how often they’d faced 22 common forms of mistreatment from colleagues and supervisors. A separate set of questions asked about pressure from students over grades.

The most common issues related to colleagues weren’t shouting or threats. They were easier to dismiss: unmanageable workloads, withheld information and impossible deadlines.

Pressure from students over grades was reported more frequently than bullying from colleagues.

What still isn’t known

Gaps remain in understanding the root causes of bullying of faculty.

Studies that follow the same faculty over several years could show how grade bullying builds over time, and whether it pushes people to leave or lose trust in their institutions. One likely pattern is that grade bullying escalates when it works, wearing faculty down until they either give in or leave their jobs.

Researchers need to test what actually works to stop bullying, and whether those fixes hold up at different kinds of colleges and universities.

Bigger studies would help. So would sitting down with faculty and hearing their experiences in their own words to add context that a survey can’t capture.

Future research could also explore interventions to mitigate bullying and measure their effectiveness across diverse educational contexts.

Bullying at work is a form of violence. The harm is psychological rather than physical, but it’s real. Change starts with higher standards of conduct for everyone, from first-year students to senior administrators and leaders committed to enforcing respectful rules.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Jason Walker, Associate Professor of Psychology, Health and Wellness, Adler University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.