If you’ve felt a complete sense of exhaustion lately, join the club. New research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that fatigue is running rampant in the good ol’ U.S. of A.
CDC scientists examined nationally representative data of Americans across the country. Nearly three-quarters of people over 18 reported they felt fatigued in the past three months, they found, while over 15% felt fatigued most or all of the time. People with frequent fatigue were also substantially more likely to have other health problems, including depression.
“This report provides a unique look at the prevalence and distribution of fatigue symptoms that are not condition-specific in the general U.S. population,” the authors wrote in their paper, published this month by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.
The fatigued states of America
Though everyone feels tired from time to time, fatigue is a state of extreme exhaustion that doesn’t necessarily improve with rest or sleep. It can be the primary sign of a persistent medical issue, as with myalgic encephalomyelitis (also known as chronic fatigue syndrome), or a symptom of acute, self-limiting illnesses like the flu.
According to the CDC researchers, studies looking at the prevalence of fatigue have typically focused on smaller groups of people with specific medical conditions, such as cancer. For this study, the researchers wanted to measure fatigue more broadly in the general public. To do so, they turned to data from the 2024 version of the National Health Interview Survey, a long-running survey of Americans’ reported medical conditions, health care use, and other health-related behaviors conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The researchers defined fatigue in this study as people saying yes when asked if they had felt “very tired or exhausted.” In 2024, a total of 71.5% of respondents said they were fatigued in the preceding three months. Of these, 54.9% said they had fatigue some days, 10.7% said it was most days, and 5.9% felt it every day. A majority of people with frequent fatigue said they felt it most (34.5%) or all of the day (20.2%).
Based on the overall U.S. adult population, that would amount to about 190 million people who have recently experienced at least some fatigue.
As often the case with health problems, the risk of fatigue wasn’t evenly distributed in the population. Women were more likely to report frequent fatigue than men (20% compared to 13%), for instance, as were the youngest adults (roughly 19% of people ages 18 to 34 compared to 13% of people over 65). Indigenous populations had the highest rates of frequent fatigue compared to other racial demographics; people in the southern U.S. had the highest regional rates; the poorest Americans had the highest rates compared to other wealth groups; and people in rural areas had higher rates than those living in large and medium-sized cities.
The burden of fatigue
Unfortunately, people with frequent fatigue often face other challenges, the authors note.
Nearly 90% reported having trouble in at least one out of nine areas related to healthy functioning, for instance, such as difficulty concentrating, being unable to take care of their basic needs like washing or dressing themselves, or mental health symptoms like depression and anxiety. More than half said they had trouble in three or more of these areas, compared to about 17% of adults without frequent fatigue who said the same. About 29% of frequent fatigue sufferers also reported having limitations participating in social activities, and 36% reported having workplace limitations.
The findings are based on people’s self-reported feelings of fatigue, which can be subjective. Also, this study is cross-sectional, meaning it only looked at a snapshot of people’s current health. As such, it’s not possible to tell which factors might be contributing to people’s fatigue, or vice versa. Some people’s fatigue might worsen their pre-existing depression symptoms, for instance, or a separate condition might be responsible for a person’s fatigue and their other issues (the authors cite the example of a person recovering from a stroke).
What this study does show is that fatigue is a widespread problem among Americans and that frequent fatigue can be especially disruptive to a person’s life.
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