A majority of U.S. employees say their colleagues should be vaccinated against COVID-19 before returning to their office, a new survey shows.
About 57 percent of workers expressed support for workplace vaccination mandates in the CNBC / SurveyMonkey poll released Friday, while 41 percent said they were against it and 2 percent had no response.
The results show quite strong support for required vaccinations across different industries, age groups and racial groups. But there’s a big political divide, with 75 percent of Democrats backing vaccine mandates versus just 41 percent of Republicans.
The online survey of 9,209 Americans, conducted Nov. 30 to Dec. 14, could aid business leaders’ decisions about vaccination policies as health officials work to combat public skepticism about the shots developed in record time as the deadly coronavirus took hold of the world .
While 60 percent of workers surveyed said they were already fully working from their usual workplaces, the vaccines could play an important role in helping offices return to normal after months of closures and security measures.
Some white collar industries showed more support for requiring vaccinations than certain blue collar industries, the survey found. For example, some 68 percent of advisory and research workers supported vaccine mandates, compared to 51 percent of production workers.
Older Americans were also more likely to support these policies, with 73 percent of those over 65 and 51 percent of 35- to 44-year-olds, the study found.
There were also racial differences, although a significant portion of each racial group subscribed to workplace vaccination requirements.
About 87 percent of Asian workers said they support them, compared to 55 percent of white workers, 56 percent of black workers, 63 percent of Hispanic workers, and 49 percent of those who identified as “other.”
Americans appear to have warmed to the coronavirus vaccines as they worked their way through the regulatory approval process. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, about 71 percent of Americans surveyed in December said they were certain or likely to be vaccinated, up from 63 percent in September.
Nonetheless, Vice President Mike Pence received his photo live on TV Friday morning in an effort to bolster confidence in the breakthrough vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech that was rolled out this week.
Moderna’s vaccine is expected to follow early next week, after a Food and Drug Administration panel recommended its approval for emergency use on Thursday.