The 2026 ETS Human Progress Report – U.S. Edition paints a striking picture: U.S. workers understand that the rules of career survival have changed, and yet, when it comes to acting on that understanding, they are falling behind.
We're calling this phenomenon adaptability paralysis: the gap between knowing that continuous adaptation is essential and actually doing something about it.
Adaptability awareness is high
U.S. workers are not naïve about what today's labor market demands. According to the report, 78% of U.S. workers say job security no longer exists without continuous adaptation — a figure that closely mirrors the global average of 77%. And a full 85% of U.S. workers agree that upskilling or reskilling isn't a choice; it's a necessity to compete in today's job market.
This is near-universal recognition. The imperative to adapt is clear to U.S. workers and widely accepted. So why isn't action following awareness?
The “doing” gap
When we look beyond attitudes to proactive behaviours, U.S. workers start to lag behind their global peers.
Only 71% of U.S. workers say they proactively develop new, diverse skills to safeguard against uncertainty in the future of jobs. That sounds reasonable in isolation. But set against the global average of 77%, and against high-growth markets like India (89%) and Indonesia (92%), a significant gap opens up.
Across nearly every measure of proactive engagement — learning digital tools, pursuing credentials, seeking on-the-job training — U.S. workers are participating at lower rates than their global peers.
Choosing stability over change
Perhaps most revealing is what U.S. workers do when disruption actually hits.
The global norm in response to workplace disruption is active: 68% of workers worldwide are learning AI, digital or technical tools; 60% are upskilling through on-the-job training; 57% are obtaining a skills credential.
In the U.S., all three figures are lower: 57%, 53% and 50% respectively.
But the more telling finding is what U.S. workers are doing instead. They are more likely than their global peers to accelerate retirement plans in response to disruption (42% vs. 38% globally). And strikingly, U.S. workers are also more likely than their global peers to take no action at all (26% vs. 19% globally).
To put it another way, when faced with disruption, one in four U.S. workers are opting to wait it out. This spotlights a thread seen throughout the report, U.S. workers are waiting for clearer guidance before they act.
Pockets of progress
However, adaptability paralysis is not universal across the country. The state-level data shows that proactive skill development does exist in the U.S. — it's just unevenly distributed.
Delaware leads the nation, with 89% of workers saying they are proactively developing skills, followed by Alaska at 87% and both Idaho and Iowa at 83%. The District of Columbia also reaches 83%.
These states demonstrate that the conditions can exist to translate awareness into action. The question is: what are these conditions and how can we replicate them more broadly?
Why workers aren't acting: four stacked barriers
Understanding adaptability paralysis requires looking beyond motivation. The report identifies four barriers that create conditions in which the will to upskill frequently isn’t enough to produce action.
Time
The most immediate barrier is time. Sixty-three percent of U.S. workers say it is difficult to find time to learn new skills while maintaining their current workload — notably higher than the global average of 56%. When workers are already stretched, adding upskilling to the to-do list can feel impossible, even when they know it matters.
Cost
Financial barriers compound the time problem. Sixty-eight percent of U.S. workers say paying the costs associated with upskilling and reskilling (e.g. course materials) is difficult. But the burden is not evenly distributed. Rural workers (77%), those earning under $75,000 a year (75%), and non-college graduates (75%) report even higher rates of financial difficulty. These are often the workers facing the greatest disruption risk, and the greatest urgency to reskill — yet they face the steepest financial barriers to doing so.
Access
Even when workers are motivated and can afford to act, access is not guaranteed. More than half of U.S. workers (52%) say accessing the certifications they need is difficult. Wanting to upskill and being able to upskill remain, for many, two very different things.
Employer support
Perhaps the most systemic barrier is the lack of institutional backing. Fifty-seven percent of U.S. workers say it is difficult to get employer support for upskilling and reskilling. While 72% say it is difficult to determine which credentials are recognized and valued by employers. Not knowing which credentials employers are seeking, undermines workers’ confidence that any investment in upskilling will actually pay off.
The cost of adaptability paralysis and the path forward
Adaptability paralysis is not a neutral state. Every quarter that passes without skill development is a quarter of widening distance from the U.S. workforce's leading edge. As high-growth markets invest heavily in upskilling — with Indonesia at 92%, Vietnam at 90%, and Brazil and India both at 89% proactive skill development — the competitive stakes of U.S. inaction grow.
The 2026 ETS Human Progress Report — U.S. Edition makes clear that U.S. workers know this. The insights into upskilling and reskilling barriers make equally clear that the problem is not a lack of will — it is a lack of time, money, access and guidance.
To learn how U.S. workers want governments, employers and educators to support them in overcoming these barriers, read the full report.