Nurses are still America’s most trusted workers

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%.