Abstract: Objective To understand the research condition and developmental trends of study on occupational stress. Methods The Chinese periodical full text database of science and technology (Chongqing VIP) was used to retrieve the papers related to occupational stress study from 1989 to 2013. The publishing time,the types of journals,the study funding sources, the major authors and research teams, the institutions and research characteristics were described. Results A total of 514 research papers related to occupational stress study were retrieved and most were published after 2002. 80.0 percent of these papers were published by the authors from the colleges or hospitals. The most papers study the relationship of depressive symptoms, job burnout and work ability with occupational stress. The study design was mainly cross-sectional study, and the case-control, cohort and intervention study design were used very few. There were few study on scaling and mechanism study. Conclusion The study on occupational stress is increasing in China in recent 20 years, but the academic level should be improved.