A growing number of U.S. workers are required to be vaccinated against the Wuhan coronavirus as a condition of their employment, a new Gallup poll shows. The numbers were collected around the time President Biden said in a statement that he is calling on more companies "in the private sector to step up with vaccine requirements that'll reach millions more people."
Gallup's latest results were compiled from Aug. 16-22 through Gallup's COVID-19 tracking survey, based on web interviews with more than 1,800 U.S. workers who are members of the organization's nationally representative panel.
In the poll, published on Wednesday, Gallup found that 19 percent of workers surveyed said that their employer is requiring the COVID-19 vaccine for its employees. This number more than doubled from July, where the percentage of employers requiring workers to be vaccinated was at 9 percent. In June, 6 percent of workers said they were required to be vaccinated. In May, that number was at 5 percent.
Also noted was that 55 percent of respondents said their employers are "encouraging but not requiring" vaccination. This is down from July, where the percentage was 62 percent. In June and in May, this percentage was higher – 66 percent – both months.
As for employers who have not indicated whether or not workers need to be vaccinated, the numbers have stayed relatively consistent – May, June, and July were all 29 percent, while August was 26 percent.
The majority of workers, regardless of the direction of their opinion, are either strongly in support or strongly against work-mandated vaccination requirements. Forty-one percent of respondents polled were strongly for vaccination requirements, 31 percent were strongly opposed. The remaining 28 percent felt more neutral on the issue.
In previous months, fewer respondents who were surveyed felt strongly for supporting employer-mandated vaccine requirements. In July, 36 percent of respondents strongly favored mandatory vaccinations for work. In June and May, the percentages were 33 percent and 29 percent, respectively.
On the contrary, the number of respondents who strongly opposed vaccination requirements by their employer has stayed around the same. In July, 29 percent of respondents were strongly opposed to vaccine requirements. In June, that number was 30 percent. In May, that number was at 31 percent – the same percentage from August.
As a growing number of companies announce vaccine requirements, especially following the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the Pfizer vaccine, perhaps the polling numbers of workers being required to obtain the vaccine will escalate in the coming months.