The smallest state in the country has earned a big win for its labor market.
Rhode Island was recognized as having the happiest employees in the country, according to a study from human resources firm, Bamboo HR, published Tuesday.
Employees’ happiness score was 46 percent higher than the national average, the study found, based on a scoring system of how likely a person was to recommend their place of work.
The study comes amid a difficult time for job hunters. Unemployment remains around four-year highs; younger workers are getting fewer opportunities as older workers choose to stay in the workforce and artificial intelligence’s (AI) emergence is threatening jobs across various industries.
Winners and losers
The five states with the happiest employees were, according to the study, Rhode Island, Maine, Hawaii, Arizona and Alaska.
Rhode Island’s labor market includes 45,239 private companies and 427,086 workers, according to 2025 data from the state’s Department of Labor and Training.
Smaller companies dominate the job market, with businesses employing less than 20 people making up 92.4 percent of all employers and 26.6 percent of the workforce, the department noted.
New Hampshire earned the lowest employee happiness score, followed by Connecticut, Wyoming, Montana and Oregon.
The magic formula
The study found that employee happiness isn’t based on location, ideology or income, as the best and worst states were scattered across the country. Instead, employee happiness tends to be based on several factors, with turnover playing a key role.
“The findings suggest that employee happiness is shaped far more by labor-market dynamics - especially opportunity and mobility - than by place-based factors like regional culture, cost of living, income levels, or politics,” the study noted.
“States with similar industries and demographics can experience vastly different sentiment outcomes depending on how freely workers can move and how retention and opportunity interact.”
The study found that state labor markets could be classified into four turnover categories:
- Ideal stability: High satisfaction, low turnover
- Healthy dynamism: High satisfaction, high turnover
- Acute attrition: Low satisfaction, high turnover
- Hidden risk: Low satisfaction, low turnover.
The five states with the happiest employees all earned “ideal stability” or “healthy dynamism” recognition, while the bottom-five states had “acute attrition” or “hidden risk” designations.
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