Who Do You Trust…Or Mistrust?
According to a Gallup poll during December 2-18, 2024, three in four Americans consider nurses highly honest and ethical, making them the most trusted of 23 professions rated in Gallup’s annual measurement. Grade-school teachers rank second, with 61% viewing them highly, while military officers, pharmacists and medical doctors also earn high trust from majorities of Americans.
The least trusted professions, with more than half of U.S. adults saying their ethics are low or very low, are lobbyists, members of Congress and TV reporters.
Of the remaining occupations measured in the Dec. 2-18, 2024, poll, six (including police officers, clergy and judges) are viewed more positively than negatively by Americans, although with positive ratings not reaching the majority level. The other nine, notably including bankers, lawyers and business executives, are seen more negatively than positively, with no more than 50% rating their ethics low.
The 76% of U.S. adults who now say nurses have “very high” or “high” honesty and ethical standards is far more than any of the other professions rated. Still, the current rating is 10 percentage points lower than the highest rating for nurses, recorded in 2020, when they were on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic and their ethics ratings soared.
Grade schoolteachers have a 61% high/very high rating while military officers have a 59% rating. The following are pharmacists with 57% and medical doctors with 53%. All of the remaining professions have a lower score for very high ethics than average plus low/very low. One conclusion is those in the “helping professions” rate highest in honesty and ethics.
Perhaps not surprising to most Americans, members of Congress have a rating of only 8% very high and lobbyists even worse. This doesn’t surprise me as our government has been dysfunctional for a long time. We tend to “kick the can down the road” on many issues (i.e., immigration). Moreover, most of us do not trust our representatives in Congress. They tend to look out for what is in their best interests, not the public interest.
Bankers, lawyers and business executives are near the bottom, right by car salespeople. What should we make of their low rating on honesty and ethics? One conclusion is the professions involved in our capitalistic economic system are not working. Capitalism is being attacked by many sides, including those who prefer a more socialistic system. Just consider the 33-year-old democratic socialist Assembly member named Zohran Mamdani now running for mayor of NYC. Bernie Sanders is a long-standing socialist and then we have the so-called “squad.”
Honesty and ethics are two values that provide the ethical foundation for an economic system and system of government that builds trust in the minds of the public. The Gallup results make it clear that trust has taken a hit over the past few years.
Do We Trust the Federal Government?
A Pew Research Center survey in spring 2024, shows that only 22% of U.S. adults said they trust the federal government to do the right thing just about always or most of the time. Perhaps surprisingly, this was up 6 percentage points from the year before, but it’s too early to tell if that’s a one-off or a trend. The 2023 measure of 16% was among the lowest in more than six decades of polling.
Congress has faced a growing decline in confidence. Around 7 in 10 Americans have an unfavorable view of Congress, an institution that has run in the red on this front for well over a decade. And a whopping 85% of Americans say they don’t think elected officials care what people like them think.
Political parties hardly fare better. Aside from the obvious point that each side has dim views of the other, a record 28% of Americans have unfavorable views of both the Democratic and Republican parties, up from 7% about two decades ago.
Overall, the title of a comprehensive Pew Center report on this topic last year—“Americans’ Dismal View of the Nation’s Politics”—captures the sentiment best.
I’d like to say I am hopeful that things will turn around and the public will start to trust our leaders and institutions again, but there is no reason to believe it especially with the current administration in power.
What can we do as Americans to make things better? We need to learn compassion and empathy for others. If we lived in a society that valued these characteristic traits of behavior, our economic and political systems would become functional again. In my view, the last time a majority of us believed in those economic and government systems and respected them is probably in the 1960s-1970s when JFK was the President.
Posted by Dr. Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on July 23, 2025. Steve is the author of Beyond Happiness and Meaning: Transforming Your Life Through Ethical Behavior, which is available on Amazon. Learn more about his activities at: https://www.stevenmintzethics.com/ and signing up for the newsletter.