88% Use AI at Work, Yet Everyone’s Swamped Anyway

KEY POINTS

•EY surveyed 15,000 employees and 1,500 employers in November 2025 across 29 countries about workload changes.
•64% of employees said their workload increased over the past year, feeling strained by economic and tech pressures.
•Although 88% use AI tools mainly for basic tasks, only 5% exploit AI’s full potential to boost productivity.
•EY’s Kim Billeter said anxiety about skill erosion and insufficient training are worsening workplace stress despite AI adoption.

In the 2025 EY survey involving 15,000 overworked souls across 29 countries, 64% confessed their workload skyrocketed in just a year. EY’s global people consulting guru Kim Billeter explained this horror show isn’t AI working overtime, but the ‘pressure, uncertainty, and fear of falling behind,’ basically stress Halloween all year. Despite 88% playing with AI — mostly for baby tasks like search or document summaries — only a tragic 5% graduated to AI whisperers powering real magic. The rest drown in ‘AI workslop,’ a fancy term for computer-generated junk turning emails into one more item on the never-ending to-do list. Meanwhile, employers juggle ‘do more with less’ and ‘role complexity,’ proving the future is really just chaos with more tech toys.