If you’re living in a state of perpetual exhaustion, congrats! You’re part of the overwhelming majority of Americans—71.5 percent of adults surveyed, to be exact—who reported being fatigued, according to a recently released CDC report.
Data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics examined around 27,000 adults in the 2024 National Health Interview Survey and found that nearly three-quarters of the country spent the past three months feeling completely drained. That tallies to about 190 million people shambling through unrelenting days, hoping one of them will bring sweet relief. A small but still significant percentage, 16 percent, of respondents reported “frequent fatigue,” meaning that they felt a deep, profound level of exhaustion almost every day of their lives.
Once you dig into the details, you see that while the misery is widespread, it isn’t equally distributed. Women were much more likely to experience systemic burnout and an uneven distribution of home responsibilities compared to men, who were less likely than women to report fatigue.
Americans Are Exhausted, and Young Adults Are Feeling It the Most
Young adults aged 18 to 34 were the most fatigued demographic, with higher exhaustion rates than senior citizens, even in their virile, energetic youth. Indigenous populations and folks in the South and Midwest also reported being some of the most fatigued people in the country.
If you’re wondering how things like fatigue and exhaustion are defined, they usually aren’t things that can go away with a good night’s sleep. This is a deeply rooted, persistent physical and mental drain that’s usually linked to the existential dread of the times, of which there is an abundance.
There are other factors at play other than just the general misery of the era, like underlying health conditions and depression, but those personal issues are just as influential on one’s sense of exhaustion as the country’s broader economic conditions.
In short, everything’s a mess, there’s no end in sight, and even the mere thought of having to endure any more of it is tiring enough to warrant a nap because a whole lot of us are at wit’s end.
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