A Gallup Poll found that trust in medical doctors, while still high, has dropped the most of any profession since 2021. Meanwhile, 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, and pharmacists 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.
Nurses have earned the highest rating in every year but one since Gallup added them to the annual survey in 1999. The exception was 2001, when firefighters — included only that year — earned a record 90% trust rating after their heroism in responding to the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers.
Trust in medical doctors has fallen 14 percentage points since 2021. After reaching a historical high of 77% in 2020, doctors’ ethics rating not only returned to its 2019/pre-pandemic level of 65% but, at 53%, is now the lowest since the mid-1990s.
Judges have seen a 10-point decline to 28% in their honesty and ethics rating, by far the lowest for this profession which, before 2021, had scored between 43% and 53%.
Views of the police have been variable, but after earning majority trust in 2020 and 2021, their rating slipped to 45% in 2023 and 44% today.
Clergy have lost another six points in public esteem since 2021, continuing the long-term downward trend in trust in that profession.
The second-most-significant decline in ethics ratings this century has been for judges, who have experienced a 21-point drop since the early 2000s. The downward trend parallels recent downturns in Americans’ confidence in the Supreme Court as well as the judicial system and courts more broadly. The high court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade as well as various legal cases against Donald Trump since 2020 could explain declines in these ratings by both major parties, according to Gallup..
Despite declining public trust in most professions over the past quarter century, the rank order has stayed largely the same, with nurses at the top, followed by grade-school teachers, military officers, pharmacists and medical doctors. Meanwhile, in terms of net trust, members of Congress, advertising practitioners, car salespeople and lobbyists have ranked at the bottom. Ratings of the other 15 professions measured in both years haven’t changed appreciably.