Job insecurity, depression and anxiety, doubt and distrust of leadership, a lack of motivation, a lack of commitment and a lack of job satisfaction. Those are the feelings not just of the people who have lost their jobs during the pandemic, but the ones who haven't.

In the UK, a little over half of the estimated 9.5 million workers who were on furlough have now returned to their jobs, but one in eight workers across the country are still waiting.

In the U.S., millions of workers remain furloughed and are unsure when they will be called back to work — or whether they will be called back at all. The number of unemployed Americans is, by some estimates, as high as 21 million people, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting that in July, 9.2 million Americans were still temporarily unemployed. This wave hit the real estate industry hard, with companies across all sectors forced to furlough workers or permanently let them go.

The employees who still have their jobs after their company downsizes may seem like the lucky ones, but it isn’t that simple: It’s common for workers who keep their jobs while seeing their co-workers get cut to be plagued by the psychological turmoil described above. Organizational psychologists have a term for this: workplace survivor syndrome.

According to the Harvard Business Review, nearly three-quarters of "survivor" employees experienced a productivity nosedive, and 69% harbored sentiments of negativity, doubt and dissatisfaction toward their jobs or employers.

"Layoff survivors’ guilt is very real and very common, even in a strong economy when the likelihood of former colleagues finding other positions is strong," Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. Senior Vice President Andrew Challenger said in a recent statement. "However, now the additional stress of working and living through a pandemic can make survivors’ guilt even more acute. The departure of colleagues, whether through an individual or mass layoff, tends to come with decreased morale for those who remain."