07-29-2026
Job stress is quietly disrupting sleep for millions of workers
Workers in their 50s and 60s are dealing with far more sleep trouble than anyone realized, and much of it traces directly back to stress on the job.
New research found that almost 70 percent of participants experienced persistent, clinically significant sleep problems, despite having no known history of sleep disorders
Nearly 92 percent crossed the clinical threshold for a sleep disorder at least once during the study period
The year-long study comes from the University of Edinburgh and followed 45 workers aged 50 to 66 across a range of employment sectors.
Researchers gathered more than 1,900 self-reported wellbeing and workplace assessments alongside over 5,200 days of data collected through wearable sensors
This provided an unusually detailed, continuous picture of how sleep and work actually interact over time
Experts say sleep in healthy, working adults has received far less attention than sleep in clinical populations
Many earlier studies also focused mainly on total sleep duration or relied on less detailed monitoring methods
That gap likely means sleep disturbances in this group have gone underappreciated for years, hiding in plain sight simply because nobody was measuring the right thing
That blind spot showed up clearly in this study’s data. Participants often blamed their poor sleep on simply not getting enough rest, but data collected from wrist-worn devices told a different story.
Frequent nighttime disturbances and awakenings, not insufficient total sleep time, were more often the actual culprit.
In fact, 90 percent of participants experienced sleep disturbances throughout the study despite most of them averaging between 6.5 and 8 hours of sleep a night, a range generally considered adequate.
The real problem wasn’t how long people were sleeping, but how frequently that sleep was being interrupted
To make sense of such a large, complex dataset, researchers used artificial intelligence to identify which factors, among many potential influences, were most strongly associated with sleep disruption and overall wellbeing.
Workplace experiences consistently ranked among the most important factors identified
The findings point to work-related stress as a key pathway through which job conditions affect both sleep quality and wellbeing more broadly
That connection extended beyond sleep alone. Wellbeing overall was strongly tied to work-life balance and job satisfaction.
Participants who reported feeling gloomy, irritated, or tense at work consistently reported lower wellbeing
This pattern held steady across different employment sectors and regardless of gender, suggesting this isn’t a quirk specific to any one industry or demographic group
These findings arrive at a moment when the workforce is aging rapidly.
Roughly one in three UK workers is currently over 50, and the number of people over 65 in the UK is projected to reach 17.7 million by 2050.
Since poor health remains one of the leading reasons people leave the workforce before retirement, supporting the health and wellbeing of older workers has become an increasingly urgent priority for employers and policymakers alike
The research is part of the Supporting Healthy Aging at Work project, an interdisciplinary program led by the University of Edinburgh Business School
“Having spent years analyzing data from patients with clinical sleep and mental health disorders, I was genuinely surprised by the sheer scale of sleep problems we uncovered in this otherwise undiagnosed group,” said lead author Athanasios Tsanas.
“Our analysis clearly demonstrates that many of these sleep and wellbeing issues are work-related, with overall wellbeing heavily dependent on sustained work-life balance.”
“By utilizing longitudinal smartwatch data, we captured nuanced, previously unexplored patterns.”
“Crucially, these findings point to actionable intervention strategies, offering a roadmap to help people build healthier, more sustainable lives as they get closer to the transition into retirement.”
Dr. Belinda Steffan from the University of Edinburgh Business School, echoed that sense of surprise while pointing to the range of factors actually driving the problem.
“While we knew from previous evidence that sleep can influence work, and work can influence sleep, we were surprised by the extent to which our non-clinical study population were struggling with their sleep,” she explained.
“While there are certainly some age-related sleep disruptors, such as menopause and bodily aging, there are also many wider factors such as care-related stress, financial stress, and wider non-age-specific work-related stress.”
“Our study highlights that sleep is a workplace health and wellbeing issue. Organizations and employers must consider the impact of work-related sleep problems on their workforce, focusing on workers over 50 in the context of our study, but relevant to all age groups.”
That final point carries particular weight for how organizations think about employee wellbeing programs going forward.
Rather than treating sleep as a purely personal matter, the findings suggest employers have a genuine stake in addressing it
Supporting better sleep could improve employee health and help experienced workers remain active and engaged in the workforce for longer
The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports
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