This security survey - which took in responses from around 600 office workers in London's Canary Wharf and New York's Wall Street - also revealed that 41% of workers had already taken sensitive computer data from their former employers to their new job.
According to Cyber-Ark, the IT security vendor that sponsored the survey, stealing employer's data has become endemic in modern culture with 85% of people admitting they know it is illegal to download corporate information from their employer.
Despite this, the IT security company noted that almost half of respondents to the security survey could not stop themselves taking it with them, with the majority admitting the data could be useful in the future.
The survey also found that 57% of respondents said that it has become a lot easier to take sensitive computer information from under their bosses noses this year - up from 29% last year.
The annual study - entitled The Global Recession and Its Effect on Work Ethics - found that a quarter of workers admitted that the recession had made them feel less loyal towards their employers.
32% of people surveyed revealed that they would do their utmost to take a peek at an office redundancy list to find out if their name was on the schedule.
Commenting to the security survey's results, Mark Fullbrook, UK director of Cyber-Ark, said that, whilst there are glimmers of hope in the UK and US economies, employee confidence has clearly been rocked.
"This survey shows that many workers are willing to do practically anything to ensure their job security or make themselves more marketable - including committing a crime", he said.
"Whilst there is no excuse for employees who are willing to compromise their ethics to save their job, much of the responsibility for protecting sensitive proprietary data is the responsibility of the employer", he added.
"Organisations must be willing to make improvements to how they monitor and control access to databases, networks and systems, even by those privileged users who have legitimate rights.
"Additional protection can be added with simple steps like frequently changing passwords and only granting access to certain information on-demand."