Workplace NDA Statistics: How Common NDAs Are and What Workers Are Asked to Sign

The NDA leads, but look at how close class action waivers and arbitration clauses sit behind it. These clauses usually arrive in the same packet, so one review should cover all of them.

The jump to 58% for workers 50 and over may reflect more senior roles and more exits with severance papers attached. Younger workers sign less often, but 39% is hardly rare, and it often starts with a first job offer that gets signed quickly.

Workers with a high school education or less report NDAs at 29%, well below college graduates. The gap probably tracks the kind of jobs that involve sensitive information, not a difference in what the clauses say.

A real share of signers either cannot talk about misconduct or are not sure if they can. Not knowing is its own problem, because people tend to stay quiet when in doubt.

Only 21% named the NDA as their top worry, and 27% named it as the clause that concerns them least. Workers sign NDAs more than any other covenant yet rarely rank them as a top concern, which is how overly broad terms slip through.

Workers bound by an NDA, by sex and race (2024 survey of 947 U.S. job seekers)

Source: The Pennsylvania State University, School of Labor and Employment Relations, with Lift Our Voices, Contracts That Bind: Untangling the Use of NDAs, Forced Arbitration and Other Restrictive Covenants in the U.S. Labor Market (Mark D. Gough). Download as image

NDA signers: does your NDA allow you to talk about misconduct at work? (2023)

Source: Lift Our Voices / Morning Consult, Lift Our Voices / Morning Consult Poll - June 2023 - Questions and Crosstabs. Download as image

How U.S. adults say companies use NDAs, more often than not (2023)

Source: Lift Our Voices / Morning Consult, Lift Our Voices / Morning Consult Poll - June 2023 - Questions and Crosstabs. Download as image

Laws limiting workplace NDAs cited in this data

Source: U.S. Government Publishing Office (govinfo), Speak Out Act, Public Law 117-224 (S. 4524), 136 Stat. 2290; The Pennsylvania State University, School of Labor and Employment Relations, with Lift Our Voices, Breaking the Silence: Stakeholder Experiences with New Jersey's Non-Disclosure Agreement Ban (Mark D. Gough). Download as image

How common are NDAs in employment contracts?

Very. In a Penn State survey of 947 job seekers, conducted in summer and fall 2024, 45% said their current or most recent job bound them to a non-disclosure agreement. That made the NDA the most common of the five covenants the researchers measured.

The survey was not a random sample of every worker in the country, so treat 45% as a strong signal rather than a census. Still, the pattern is clear. Women reported NDAs slightly more than men, 47% against 43%, and the share climbs with age, from 39% of workers aged 18 to 29 to 58% of those 50 and over.

Many people are bound by more than one restriction at once. A typical offer packet might hold an NDA, an arbitration agreement and a class action waiver, each signed in a minute on the first morning. Class action waivers came in at 43% and mandatory arbitration at 39%, both close behind the NDA, while non-competes sat at 22% and non-solicits at 19%.

That ranking surprises people, because non-competes get most of the headlines. But a non-compete limits where you work next. An NDA limits what you can say, sometimes for good, and it is far more likely to be in your file.

Can an NDA stop you from reporting harassment or misconduct?

For a lot of workers, the honest answer is that they do not know. In a 2023 Morning Consult poll of NDA signers, 66% said their agreement allowed them to discuss workplace misconduct, 18% said it did not, and 15% were not sure. Among women, 27% said their NDA barred that conversation.

Federal law now limits some of this. The Speak Out Act, signed Dec. 7, 2022, makes pre-dispute nondisclosure and non-disparagement clauses unenforceable in sexual assault and sexual harassment disputes. New Jersey went further in March 2019, making provisions that hide details of discrimination, retaliation or harassment claims unenforceable against the employee.

Picture a project manager who signed a standard NDA at onboarding and later sees a supervisor harass a coworker. If the agreement says she cannot disclose "any information concerning the company or its personnel," she may assume she has to stay quiet, even if a court would never enforce that line against her. The chilling effect works whether or not the clause is legal.

Those laws protect you after the fact. They do not stop an employer from putting broad language in the contract, and many people never test whether a clause would hold up. That is why the wording on the page still matters.

Do workers actually want to sign NDAs?

Most who have signed one would like a way out. In the same 2023 poll, 64% of people with an NDA at their current job said they would like to opt out, and 54% wanted their employer to stop using NDAs altogether. Public support for limits runs high too: 62% of US adults supported the Speak Out Act.

US adults are split on why companies use them. Asked how NDAs are used more often than not, 49% said to protect valuable company information and 32% said to keep employees from speaking out about mistreatment. Both uses exist, often in the same document, and you only find out which one you are dealing with by reading the definitions.

What happens when states limit NDAs?

Researchers looked at Glassdoor reviews after California, New Jersey and Illinois barred NDAs that conceal unlawful conduct. Mentions of harassment in reviews rose 24%, according to a July 2026 summary of the study.

The researchers' reading is not that harassment got worse. It is that workers felt freer to say what was already happening, and job seekers got information they could not see before. For you, that means a company's public reputation may reflect what its contracts allow people to say as much as what actually goes on inside.

What should employers and small businesses take from this?

If you run a business, the data cuts both ways. NDAs are normal and often necessary. Client lists, pricing, source code and product plans deserve protection, and a short, clear agreement is how you get it.

The trouble starts with templates that try to cover everything. A clause broad enough to silence talk about harassment can be unenforceable under the Speak Out Act or state law, and an overreaching agreement invites a court to cut it back or refuse to enforce it. Worse, the Glassdoor findings suggest that silence does not stay hidden forever. When the rules change, the reviews catch up.

A tighter NDA is easier to defend. Define what is confidential, list the standard exclusions, state plainly that nothing stops an employee from reporting unlawful conduct, and set a sensible end date for anything that is not a trade secret. Freelancers and contractors who sign client NDAs should push for the same shape, since a vague definition can make it hard to show your own past work.

What to do before you sign a workplace NDA

• Ask for the agreement before your start date so you can read it without a manager waiting at the desk.
• Find the definition of confidential information. If it covers everything you learn on the job, ask to limit it to marked or genuinely secret material.
• Check for the standard exclusions: public information, things you knew before, and anything you learn independently.
• Look for a clear carve-out that lets you report illegal conduct, file charges with agencies, and talk about harassment or discrimination.
• Note how long it lasts. Trade secrets can be protected for as long as they stay secret, but ordinary business information should have an end date.
• Read the severance agreement separately. Exit NDAs and non-disparagement clauses are often broader than the ones you signed when hired.
• Check whether the NDA hides a non-solicit or non-compete inside the confidentiality language.

Sources and method

Every number on this page comes from the sources below, each opened and read on or before October 18, 2026. A second, independent review checked every figure against its source and corrected anything that did not match. Figures that could not be confirmed were left out.

1. The Pennsylvania State University, School of Labor and Employment Relations, with Lift Our Voices, Contracts That Bind: Untangling the Use of NDAs, Forced Arbitration and Other Restrictive Covenants in the U.S. Labor Market (Mark D. Gough) (January 2025 (original PDF dated Jan. 23, 2025; survey fielded Summer and Fall 2024). Live rebranded edition linked from liftourvoices.org/research, 18 pages, same text and figures; checked 2026-10-20.)
2. Lift Our Voices / Morning Consult, New Poll: Majority of Americans Support Federal Legislation to Combat Toxic Workplace Behavior (Morning Consult survey) (July 11, 2023 (fielded May 30 - June 1, 2023). Original page now returns 404; archived copy read.)
3. Lift Our Voices / Morning Consult, Lift Our Voices / Morning Consult Poll - June 2023 - Questions and Crosstabs (June 2023 (released July 2023))
4. W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, How broad non-disclosure agreements leave job seekers in the dark (summary of Sockin, Sojourner and Starr, 'Nondisclosure Agreements and Externalities from Silence', PNAS vol. 123, issue 23) (July 7, 2026)
5. U.S. Government Publishing Office (govinfo), Speak Out Act, Public Law 117-224 (S. 4524), 136 Stat. 2290 (Dec. 7, 2022)
6. The Pennsylvania State University, School of Labor and Employment Relations, with Lift Our Voices, Breaking the Silence: Stakeholder Experiences with New Jersey's Non-Disclosure Agreement Ban (Mark D. Gough) (October 2023 (PDF dated Oct. 21, 2023))