Burned out and underpaid: Study shows museums struggling to keep workers

American museum workers are underpaid and burning out at a monumental scale, a new 197-page study has found, underscoring ongoing labor tensions across the field as unionization spreads and leaders face growing political and cultural pressures.

The study is the second conducted by Museums Moving Forward, a limited-life organization devoted to creating a more just museum sector by 2030. It was expanded from the 2023 report to include 3,100 staff respondents and 91 museums and seeks to use quantitative metrics to draw its insights using data collected from November 2024 to February 2025.

While the data reveal serious structural challenges, the report also shows that overall career satisfaction among museum workers has improved since 2023 — especially at smaller institutions that staff described as more supportive and mission-driven.

“This year’s report reveals that inequities in pay, promotions, and workplace culture remain entrenched across the field,” MMF executive director Mia Locks said in a statement.

“Yet it also points to some positive trends: career satisfaction has improved significantly since 2023 and smaller institutions are showing that more equitable, meaningful workplaces are possible.”

Key findings from the report include the revelation that 49% of museum workers have looked for a new job in the past year with 54% saying they have considered leaving the industry altogether in the last five years.

In fact, the study calculated the number of permanent, full-time workers hired within the past two years who are still employed by their institution, a measure known as churn rate. Results showed that the average churn rate at museums was 27%, meaning that, on average, more than a quarter of workers hired in the past two years already left.

And the study found that a quarter of the museums had churn rates above 40%, which MMF said “may have serious implications” for the experiences of workers who remain and for the overall health of the museum.

Pay and burnout were among the most cited reasons museum workers had considered leaving their jobs. The study found that 28% of full-time art museum workers do not make a living wage, defined by the Economic Policy Institute as the ability to afford basic necessities such as housing, food, health care and transportation.

According to the EPI’s Family Budget Calculator, a family of four in New York City would need about $153,000 a year to meet basic expenses — more than double the median full-time museum salary reported by MMF.”

“Been working in museums for a few years now and lately the burnout is hitting hard,” one self-described museum worker wrote on the r/MuseumPros subreddit on Sunday.

“Between low pay, limited staff, and endless do more with less expectations, it’s starting to wear me down. I love the work and the mission, but some days it’s tough to stay motivated.”

Among the top recommendations made to them from others in the thread were to “quiet quit” and “do less.” Others said that they left because of their experiences.

As Baby Boomers retire and Gen X begins to follow them out, Millennials and Gen Z now make up nearly two-thirds of the museum workforce.

Millennials, for example, indicated the highest burnout rate of any age group, more than twice the amount of Baby Boomers. About 50% of Millennial workers reported feeling burnout compared to just 26% of Baby Boomers.

Part of that may be that vast majority of museum workers said that promotions are scarce, with 78% of respondents saying that they had never received a promotion at their current places of work.

“I was an assistant level, working on touring exhibitions for just under two years and then did maternity cover as a manager and didn't want to go back to the assistant salary so I got what looked like a great job on paper at another national organization,” a user said in another post on Reddit last week.

“It was an absolute nightmare and I was worked to the point of burnout and then bullied until I left. I've done 19 interviews since December with 4.5 years experience and a master’s in museum studies, but it's just rejection after rejection.”

Museum staffers who hold union memberships reported feeling more dissatisfied on all metrics than their nonunion counterparts, despite having higher pay and positively reviewing the impact of the union on their lives.

There were four dimensions where art museums are performing “especially well,” as described by MMF. Significantly, museum workers collectively held widespread appreciation for the meaningful nature of art museum work and strong satisfaction with workplace relations.

MMF called it a “crucial insight” that small museums with annual operating budgets of up to $5 million are outperforming larger museums on staff satisfaction and workplace culture, despite offering lower average salaries.

Just 30% of workers overall reported feeling they had a voice in decision-making at their institutions, compared to 48% of workers in small museums. And 56% of workers at small museums felt that people in their organizations are held accountable for discrimination and harassment compared to just 38% at larger museums. Meanwhile, 79% of workers at small museums felt that diversity and difference are celebrated in their institutions.

Those disparities come as cultural institutions increasingly navigate political backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion programs, with several states restricting public-sector funding tied to DEI initiatives — some of which took effect after the survey period.

Overall, about one-third of workers, 32%, believe their art museum workplace is having a negative impact on their physical and mental health, particularly among those who have experienced workplace discrimination or harassment.

As for DEI concerns, art museum workforces remain overwhelmingly white “at all position levels and across roles.” In fact, the proportion of white workers in art museums is significantly higher than in the nonprofit sector as a whole, 67% compared to 51% respectively.

“Nonbinary workers are having the worst emotional experiences in art museums across the board,” MMF said in the study. “They report feeling the least content, excited, and hopeful, and simultaneously the most worried, angry and disappointed about working in their current jobs.”

Comparisons between the 2023 report and the 2025 report are also revealing when considering external variables like the eras in which the surveys were conducted. When data for the 2023 report was collected in Fall 2022, workers were still feeling the effects of COVID-19 pandemic layoffs and the Great Resignation while President Donald Trump was returning to the White House for his second administration during the 2025 survey.

MMF dedicated the report’s conclusion to delivering recommendations for museum leaders, while noting that the current political landscape and recent wave of cultural censorship has made it “exceedingly challenging” to be a museum director.

“When workers voice their unhappiness or move to unionize, for instance, we encourage you to refer to the data here and consider these actions as expressions of what the art museum sector needs to sustain itself for the long-term future,” MMF said.

“Fortunately, as we see in the data, workers are expressing precisely what they need from their art museum workplaces to remain in the field: more livable wages, less burnout, and more opportunities for professional growth.”