We've all seen the headlines. The U.S. workforce is burned out. Every week seems to bring another survey.

69% of frontline healthcare workers say they feel burned out. Twenty-nine percent of all remote workers very often or always feel burned out at work.

Teachers, tech workers, veterinarians, name the profession. There's probably a news story

about how burnt out its practitioners are. Even young content creators on social media are,

quote, burned out and breaking down, unquote, according to a New York Times story published in June.

The word burnout has become ubiquitous. It seems to sum up the stress and exhaustion

and disaffection that many of us are feeling this year. But are workers more burned out than ever?

And what does the term burnout actually mean? How does burnout differ from, say, fatigue or stress?

How do you know if you're burned out? And what can individuals, employers,

and society do to combat workplace burnout? Welcome to speaking of psychology, the flagship

podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological

science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. Our guest today is Dr. Christina Maslach, a professor of Psychology Emerita at the University

of California, Berkeley, and one of the world's foremost experts on occupational burnout.

In the early 1980s, she developed the Maslack Burnout Inventory, the standard tool used to measure

job burnout. Her work helped lead the World

Health Organization to recognize burnout as an occupational phenomenon in its 11th edition

of the International Classification of Diseases in 2019. Over the past year, she's also offered

her thoughts to the news media as an expert on the COVID-19 pandemic, job burnout, and work life.

Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Maslock.

Oh, thank you.

It's just a delight to be here.

Let's start by defining job burnout.

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