Sherwood News

Nurses are still America’s most trusted workers

While healthcare professionals continue to lead Gallup’s ranking of ethics ratings, Americans’ trust in many occupations has slumped to record lows.

Millie Giles

1/19/26 8:57AM

As the US mulls its slowing labor market, at least Americans seem to agree on a few job-related things: healthcare workers tend to be pretty honest, and the only occupation less trustworthy than working in telemarketing is being in Congress.

Last week, Gallup released the latest results for its annual poll gauging the Ethics Ratings of American Professions. Once again, nurses topped the list for honesty and ethical standards in 2025, a title that the profession has now held on to since 1999 with just one notable exception — in 2001, when firefighters took first place.

Along with military veterans and other healthcare professions, only four occupations received majority positive ratings in Gallup’s survey, just as they did the year prior. Finance and politics scored typically low in the ranking, with telemarketers and members of Congress the only workers perceived by a majority of respondents as having low ethical standards; meanwhile, positive ratings for business execs and stockbrokers, as well as five other professions, slumped to new record lows.

A bitter pill

But even as nurses continued their two-decade streak, the proportion of Americans rating the profession as honest and ethical has fallen 14 points from a pandemic-era peak. In fact, the positive ratings of medical doctors and pharmacists have also both fallen 20 and 18 points, respectively, since 2020.

While Americans themselves face a tough job market, it appears that the boost in public trust that was observed for healthcare workers and teachers during the pandemic has now all but disappeared. By Gallup’s measures, the average positive rating across 11 core US professions was the lowest it’s ever been last year, at just 29%.

Hyunsoo Rim

hardly working

5/27/26

Teens aren’t getting summer jobs like they used to — this year could be worse than ever

Teen summer hiring in the US might hit its lowest level since federal tracking began, new report finds.

Saleah Blancaflor

5/15/26

From Desi Arnaz to SpaceX: Understanding the rules of the modern economy

We talked with “Planet Money” author Alex Mayyasi about how AI might help or replace you, the superstar effect, and how the compounding effect extends beyond money.

Globes covered with various currencies suspended in space

Millie Giles5/8/26

Ahead of Mother’s Day, Google searches for “same day flower delivery” have ticked up a little earlier this year

If you’ve already made plans for a Mother’s Day gift in advance of this Sunday, congratulations. But if alarm bells are suddenly ringing, consider this a gentle reminder that, like a sizable share of the US population this time of year often does, you can still scrape together some last-minute flowers for the woman who carried you for nine months.

Data from Google Trends reveals that searches for “same day flower delivery” spike in the US in May every year, when Mother’s Day takes place. As we noted last February, the same query also gains traction around Valentine’s Day.

This year, however, it appears that searches for last-minute flowers have remained elevated in the last two months after the usual peak in February — with the search interest this April actually exceeding that seen around Cupid’s Day.

Honestly, we’re not sure why searches are spiking a little early. One explanation might be that Passover and Easter have overlapped at the start of April, and Americans wanted to celebrate with some flowers. Maybe it’s a host of Claude bots that are now running errands for AI-obsessed execs — or perhaps Americans are just impulse-buying some seasonal spring blooms after an unusually warm March, without a particular occasion.