EU workers in Britain are the most depressed about Brexit

By BARTLEBY

IF YOU live in Britain, and ever turn on the TV or read a paper, it has been hard to escape from Brexit in the last three years. It has been bad enough if you are British-born. But EU citizens who are working in the UK have faced added uncertainty about their future status.

Gartner, a research company, has conducted weekly polls of around 300 UK-based employees to see how they have been affected. The key week was towards the end of March when the official deadline for Brexit was scheduled (it has since been postponed twice). In that week, more than half of EU workers in Britain experienced disgust, anger and sadness. Those feelings have subsided a little since, but are still running at about 40% of EU workers.

Unsurprisingly, that has led EU workers to think about moving jobs. In the week starting March 7th, only 11% of them were doing so; by the week of April 8th that proportion had jumped to 24%. The proportion of footloose British-born workers saw a more modest rise from 15% to 21%.

The polling also suggests that all this Brexit uncertainty is bad for productivity as well. In the week of March 25th, the average employee spent almost an hour of their working day thinking about Brexit, with EU citizens hitting nearly 70 minutes. Since then that proportion has dropped a bit, although EU citizens still spent 47 minutes worrying about the issue. Never has national navel-gazing proved so fruitless. As the Eagles once sang

I know what's been on your mind

You're afraid it's all been wasted time