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Mid-career professionals—often seen as the dependable backbone of an organization—may in fact be at the highest risk of burnout.
While common assumptions suggest burnout primarily affects early-career employees still finding their footing or senior executives burdened by strategic pressure, research from business scholar Katie Green indicates otherwise. Her work highlights how mid-career employees face a distinct and often overlooked convergence of professional and personal strain.
As professionals move into more established roles, they are frequently expected to take on leadership responsibilities. At the same time, many are navigating intensified personal demands—raising children, supporting aging parents, and managing financial pressures. These dual burdens coincide with rising organizational expectations around performance, visibility, and leadership capability.
Green’s interviews with hundreds of managers revealed a recurring pattern: mid-level leaders are routinely overloaded and underprepared. Many step into management positions based on tenure and past performance rather than formal leadership training. As a result, they must learn to manage people while still delivering on their individual responsibilities. Even when training exists, it is often fragmented and inconsistent.
Organizational culture can further exacerbate the problem. Unrealistic targets, excessive monitoring, expectations of constant availability, and entrenched long-hours norms intensify strain. When these structural issues combine with toxic behaviors—such as bullying, harassment, disengaged senior leadership, or a failure to recognize managerial contributions (particularly affecting women)—the result is heightened anxiety and self-doubt. Both are well-documented precursors to burnout.
Compounding these pressures, new research from the University of California, Berkeley suggests that AI systems—often introduced to improve efficiency—may unintentionally fuel burnout. Rather than reducing workloads, AI tools can enable employees to take on more tasks. To-do lists expand, expectations rise, and productivity gains are absorbed into additional output. The result resembles a modern iteration of Parkinson’s law: work expands to fill available time.
Further underscoring the scope of the issue, a 2025 study from Moodle found that 66% of U.S. workers have experienced burnout at some point.
The broader implication is clear: even organizations that actively address burnout risk may be overlooking their mid-career workforce. Leaders should conduct structured reviews of mid-level management workloads and well-being, invest in robust leadership development programs, and establish guardrails around AI adoption to prevent workload inflation. Burnout is not simply a function of hours worked—it is the product of sustained pressure, inadequate support, and expanding expectations.