- Two polls find a steadily increasing share of businesses requiring employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine
- Gallup poll suggests that unvaccinated workers in a company with a vaccine mandate are two to three times as likely as other workers to seek another job
- Kaiser Family Foundation survey finds that 37 percent of unvaccinated employees say they will quit if their workplace establishes a mandate, but only 5 percent have left a job due to this requirement
Summary by Dirk Langeveld
The share of workplaces establishing a requirement for the COVID-19 vaccine has increased steadily since the summer, according to two recent surveys.
A Gallup poll, issued between Oct. 18 and 24, found that 36 percent of employees said their employer is requiring workers to get vaccinated – up from 9 percent in July. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll issued Oct. 14-24 found that the share had grown from 9 percent in June to 25 percent.
The Gallup poll found that 39 percent of employees said their employer is encouraging but not requiring vaccination, down from 62 percent in July as more companies take a firmer stance on the issue. The share of businesses with no vaccination policy has held steady at about one in four.
- The Gallup poll found that 56 percent of employees support COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the workplace while 37 percent oppose them
- 30 percent were strongly opposed to vaccine mandates, and of these 52 percent (equivalent to 16 percent of overall respondents) said they would be “extremely likely” to look for a new job if their company established a mandate they opposed
- Similarly, one-third of the 45 percent who strongly favor mandates (equivalent to 15 percent of overall respondents) said they would be extremely likely to look for another job if they disagreed with their company’s vaccine policy
- Gallup suggests that unvaccinated people who work for a company with a vaccine mandate are two to three times as likely as other employees to look for another job
- The KFF survey asked unvaccinated workers how they would respond to a requirement to get vaccinated or get tested for COVID-19 weekly, and found that 46 percent would test, 37 percent would quit, and 11 percent would get vaccinated
- The survey also determined that 5 percent of workers have left a job due to a vaccine mandate
