Great Lakes and New England Stats: What Workplace Data Says, Regionally

Every year, TriNet surveys employers and employees across the country to understand what's actually happening inside businesses. Not what the headlines say, but what the people running teams and working in them are genuinely experiencing. This year, we went deeper. For the first time, the 2025 State of Work report includes regional breakdowns across seven distinct markets in the United States. We're releasing them one at a time, and this installment turns to the Great Lakes and New England region: Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, and Ohio.

The 2025 State of Work: Great Lakes and New England draws from a survey of 150 employers and 115 employees across the fourteen states. It covers five themes: how people feel about their hours and work/life balance, empowerment and skills development, the significance of benefits, the demand for 24/7 HR, and AI in HR.

In each area, we compare what employers believe against what employees report. What emerges in Great Lakes and New England isn't one big gap. It's the same small gap, repeated across nearly everything that matters for retention.

That's the finding worth sitting with: employers in Great Lakes and New England consistently see the employee experience as better than employees report living it. 90.0% of employers say they're satisfied with their work/life balance, but only 75.6% of employees say the same, a 14-point gap. 73.1% of employers think their team works the right number of hours; only 57.4% of employees agree. 94.6% of employers believe their workforce is engaged; 78.3% of employees say the same. Each gap is modest. None of them are nothing.

The job search numbers raise the stakes. 41.3% of Great Lakes and New England employers believe fewer than 10% of their workforce is looking for a new job. Employee data tells a different story: 34.0% say they plan to switch jobs within the year, and another 21.7% aren't actively searching but would leave for the right opportunity. That's 55.7% of employees not fully locked in, a number most employers in the region aren't accounting for.

What makes the Great Lakes and New England data worth reading carefully is that not every finding runs the same direction. Employers and employees are notably aligned on the benefits that matter most: medical, paid vacation, mental health, and parental leave. And in one interesting reversal, employees actually feel more connected to their own work than employers realize. Where the gaps show up is elsewhere. Employers see more skill development ahead than employees expect for themselves, especially in creative skills and upskilling. On empowerment, they lead with training as the definition, while employees put having their voice heard first. On reasons employees leave, employers overestimate the pull of impact-driven work, while employees more often cite pay, work/life balance, and growth. On AI, employers use it more frequently and are broadly comfortable with it across HR functions, while employees adopt slower.

The report isn't a verdict on how Great Lakes and New England employers are doing. Most of the businesses reflected in this data are deeply invested in their people, and the region shows real strength in how aligned employers and employees are on core benefits. What it offers is visibility, a clearer picture of where optimism might be running ahead of reality, and where the opportunity sits for employers who want to close that gap before it shows up in turnover.

TriNet works with businesses across Great Lakes and New England to help them see that gap clearly, through HR support backed by real people, benefits best practice guidance grounded in what employees actually value, and expertise that understands what it means to operate in this market.

The 2025 State of Work: Great Lakes and New England is available now. Download it free and see where the data lands for your business. 

This is the sixth of seven regional reports we're releasing in 2025. The Southeast, California, New York and New Jersey, Southern Central, and Greater West have already dropped. The Mid-Atlantic closes the series next. If you're curious how your region compares to any of them, they're all available.

→ Download the 2025 State of Work: Great Lakes and New England

→ Talk to a TriNet HR expert about what the data means for your business