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Your back pain gets worse as you sit through a long meeting. Your wrist pain flares when you\u2019re typing furiously to meet a tight deadline. During a busy shift at the grocery store, you feel a migraine coming on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
With this in mind, we teamed up with two other management researchers, Kimberly Rocheville of Creighton University and Njoke Thomas of Boston College, to conduct a study<\/a> that Academy of Management Journal<\/em> published online in January 2026 and will include in an upcoming print edition.<\/p>\n We interviewed 66 people between 2019 and 2021. All of them said that they were in chronic pain\u2014meaning pain that lasts for at least three months<\/a>. They were all U.S. workers and at least 18 years old. They lived all over the country, in relatively more urban than rural areas. Our sample was 78% women because women tend to experience more chronic pain<\/a> than men and tend to be more open to talking about their pain.<\/p>\n This professionally diverse group included lawyers, grocery store workers, teachers, police officers, and healthcare professionals. They experienced many different kinds of pain, such as back pain, migraines, arthritis, and fibromyalgia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n