Correction note (28 July 2026): this article has been revised again. Earlier versions carried figures that did not survive a re-verification of our dataset. This round corrected two further things: the article described England-only data as covering the UK, and it quoted the gap between the highest and lowest area as a finding without the caveat ONS publishes alongside it. Every number below is reproduced from the published source named, with its margin of error where the margin matters, and the full method sits on our mental health map page.
Every People team knows the line by now: everyone is more anxious since the pandemic. It has become workplace shorthand, repeated in board meetings and benefits reviews. But what does the actual data say?
Using the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities' Fingertips database, we analysed 15,308 data points across 184 English areas, including the ONS4 personal wellbeing measures drawn from the ONS Annual Population Survey. The picture is more precise, and more actionable, than the headlines.
What the numbers actually show
In 2022/23, 23.3% of adults in England reported high anxiety (a score of 6 to 10 when asked how anxious they felt yesterday). That is nearly one in four adults. And the trend is real: the figure stood at 19.4% in 2015/16, climbed to a pandemic-period peak of 24.1% in 2020/21, and stood at 23.3% in the latest year. Source: OHID Fingertips indicator 22304, England series.
It is not uniformly distributed. Across the 150 upper tier local authorities with published figures, high anxiety ranged from 10.4% of adults in Enfield to 33.8% in Southampton, a 3.2 times gap in the same year. By region, the North West reported the highest rate (24.6%) and the East Midlands the lowest (21.5%). ONS publishes these estimates with a warning that matters here: because of small sample sizes and wide confidence intervals, local authority estimates should not be ranked against each other. The median 95% confidence interval on an area anxiety figure is 11.3 percentage points. Read the range as evidence that context varies by place, not as a league table. The comparison that does hold is each area against England, and on the 2022/23 anxiety figures 5 of the 150 areas sit significantly above England, 7 significantly below, and the remaining 138 are statistically similar to it. You can check any area on our interactive mental health map of England.
One breakdown matters more to an employer than any of the geography, and it is rarely quoted. Among adults in work in England, 21.7% reported high anxiety in 2022/23 (95% confidence interval 21.1% to 22.3%), against 25.8% of those who are economically inactive and 26.3% of the unemployed. Full time workers sit at 21.0% and part time workers at 23.6%. If you are planning provision for a workforce rather than for a population, 21.7% is the baseline to plan against, not the 23.3% headline. Source: ONS Annual Population Survey personal wellbeing estimates, England, year ending March 2023, published on the Fingertips platform, indicator 22304.
The satisfaction paradox
Here is where the data gets interesting. While 23.3% of adults reported high anxiety in 2022/23, only 5.6% reported low life satisfaction and 4.4% a low sense that what they do is worthwhile (scores of 0 to 4). Low happiness sat at 8.9%. Anxiety is the outlier among the four measures, several times more common at the poor end than the others. It is worth being precise about what that means: these are self-reported ratings of how someone felt yesterday, on a scale of 0 to 10, not clinical assessments and not diagnoses.
That disconnect matters for workplace strategy. People can find life broadly satisfying and meaningful while still carrying a heavy load of day-to-day worry. The problem is not existential despair; it is specific, recurring anxiety, which is exactly the kind of thing timely, findable support can meet.
Geography is the hidden variable
Area-level context varies, and it varies on every measure. Low life satisfaction ranges from 1.9% to 12.5% of adults across areas; low happiness from 3.5% to 17.1%. Wakefield and Leeds, one commuting belt apart, reported 30.3% and 20.1% high anxiety respectively, and of those two only Wakefield is classed as significantly worse than England. That is the honest shape of it: most areas are not statistically distinguishable from the national figure, a minority genuinely are, and a national headline tells you which of those two situations you are in for precisely nobody. The context around a workforce depends on where that workforce lives, and it is worth looking up rather than assuming.
What People teams should do with this
First, if you are planning for a workforce, plan against 21.7% rather than the 23.3% population headline, and look up the published baselines for the areas your people actually live in. Second, measure your own workforce properly with an anonymous, regular check-in rather than an annual survey. Area figures are estimates for a whole adult population with wide margins of error; they are context, and they are never a substitute for asking your own people. Third, make the support you already pay for findable: the gap between provision and use is where most benefits budgets quietly leak.
The anxiety story is real, but it is not a headline. It is 15,308 data points, and they are specific enough to act on. Start with ten seconds on the interactive mental health map of England.