The workers of the world, according to a United Nations report, are united in just one thing these days: stress.
The report warns that anxiety levels are likely to increase dramatically in coming years as globalisation continues and economic costs for business increase.
The survey examines stress in the workplace in five countries. The UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO) found that levels of anxiety, burnout and depression are spiralling out of control.
The problem is costing employers billions of pounds in sick leave and lost working time, and often leaves employees grappling with a series of complex mental disorders for years afterwards.
The study focused on the problems of stress and mental illness at work in the UK, the US, Germany, Finland and Poland.
It found that despair at work is a growing problem in all five countries, with as many as one in ten workers affected.
Depression in the workplace is the second most disabling illness for workers after heart disease, the report warns, and is likely to increase as new technologies multiply.
Downsizing, layoffs, mergers, short-term contracts and higher productivity demands have all exacted their toll in the last 10 years, leaving many workers on the verge of nervous breakdown.
"Workers worldwide confront, as never before, an array of new organisational structures and processes which can affect their mental health," the report says.
In the UK as many as three in 10 employees experience mental health problems and at any given time one in 20 Britons is contending with "major depression".
"The self-reported occurrence of anxiety and depression [in the UK] ranges from 15 to 30 per cent of the working population," the report says.
The reasons are twofold: people find it hard to adapt to new technology and cannot keep up with constantly changing working practices.
In the UK, higher stress levels are estimated to be responsible for the loss of 80 million working days a year. In financial terms, that leaves the country seriously out of pocket - about £5.3 billion annually, according to the Confederation of British Industry.
The British state-funded National Health Service (NHS) is also bearing the brunt of work-related anxiety. About 14 per cent of inpatient costs and almost a quarter of its annual bill for drugs and medication are swallowed up by stressed-out, sometimes mentally ill, office workers.
"These trends represent a wake-up call for business," the ILO says. "For employers, the costs are felt in terms of low productivity, reduced profits, high rates of staff turnover and increased costs of recruiting and training replacement staff."
In the US the picture is equally bleak. One in 10 workers suffers from clinical depression and the problem is getting worse. Some 200 million working days are lost every year because of stress, and the cost of treating anxiety-ridden workers exceeds $43 billion annually. About 40 per cent of workers complain that their job is very, or extremely, stressful.
Unrealistic deadlines, poor management and inadequate childcare arrangements are to blame, the ILO says.
As much as 4 per cent of the European Union's gross national product is ploughed into treating the stressed and mentally ill.
But it is in Finland that work-related stress seems to have reached epidemic proportions. More than half of the workforce is affected by some kind of stress-related symptom, and 7 per cent of Finnish workers are "severely burnt out".
Worn out, increasingly cynical and suffering from insomnia, the average Finnish worker's performance is badly impaired and the country's suicide rates are high.
In Germany, 7 per cent of workers opt for early retirement because they are stressed and depressed, the report says, and Poland's workforce is increasingly prone to anxiety as joblessness soars in the wake of the collapse of communism.
The World Federation for Mental Health this week warned that by 2020, stress and mental disorders will overtake road accidents, AIDS and violence as the primary cause of lost working time.