The midlife crisis is real — and it's coming soon for millennials about to experience 'intense job strain' during their peak earning years

• There is a "crisis of midlife" in rich nations across the world, according to a new NBER study.
• "Intense job strain" is among the many symptoms — peaking at age 45.

A new study looks at the phenomenon of a midlife crisis, and its consequences are more serious than your dad's sports car impulse-buy.

That's according to a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which documents a "crisis of midlife" in rich countries. Along with a decline in basic measures of life satisfaction, the researchers found middle-age upticks in intense job strain, suicide, sleeping problems, alcohol dependence, and extreme depression, among other factors.

This crisis persists despite the fact that many middle-aged individuals are in their peak earnings years, have few health issues, and live in safe and prosperous regions — a finding the researchers called "paradoxical and troubling."

"We believe the seriousness of this societal problem has not been grasped by the affluent world's policy-makers," they wrote.

The researchers found that the "maximum level of work stress" is reached around the age of 45 and cited prior research on how this stress can be predictor of elevated blood pressure, depression, and poor mental health.

While the study — which examines data on roughly 500,000 individuals across countries that include the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom — has not been peer-reviewed, its findings underscore the dissatisfaction many middle-aged Americans are experiencing at their jobs.

According to Gallup's 2022 State of the Workplace survey, 50% of American and Canadian employees experienced "a lot" of stress during their previous work day, with only East Asian workers reporting a higher stress level.

And while younger workers may have initially fueled "The Great Resignation," there's evidence older workers are joining as well. The number of resignations among the age 50 to 60 cohort grew 34% in the first quarter of 2022 from the prior year, per a Vox analysis.

Americans in stressful jobs have "quiet quit" or left for greener pastures

In response to workplace stress, some Americans have embraced "quiet quitting," a newly popular term which describes the idea of establishing work-life boundaries and not going above and beyond at one's job.

"You don't even have to just give up, but scale back on your commitment, or your presence, or your hustle," Maggie Perkins, a former teacher who quiet quit in 2018, previously told Insider.

Others have left jobs in the middle of their careers to seek out better pay, work-life balance, or start their own businesses. The same Vox analysis found a 57% uptick in resignations from employees that had worked in their previous roles for 10 to 15 years.

After working in human resources for over a decade, 39-year-old Antisha Walley started her own business in 2020 after years of disagreeing with the decisions of her superiors, she previously told Insider.

The researchers used data that dates back to at least 1965 — the year Canadian psychoanalyst Elliot Jacques is believed to have coined the term 'midlife crisis'. That means the reported upticks in job-switching, depression, stress, and alcohol consumption during the pandemic do not explain the mid-life distress the researchers documented over the past decades.

The paper's researchers did not come to a determination as to what is causing this "extreme distress" in middle-age, but they pointed to the stresses of raising children, envy of others, and unmet aspirations as plausible explanations. They also noted that rising "wisdom" could play a role in the reduced stress levels many report experiencing later in life.

The researchers also did not conclude whether the mid-life crisis is a "byproduct of today's affluent world," or a "timeless" phenomenon that has roots in humanity's early ancestors. Some research, for instance, has suggested that chimpanzees and orangutans experience a "psychological low" in the middle of their lives, suggesting the origins of the midlife crisis may be biological in nature.