I think this statistic is neither surprising nor problematic. Would you really expect more than 36% of the workforce to be frequently deserving of recognition? The job of management is not to give lip-service praise to all their employees.
And if an employee isn't providing an indispensable contribution, why are you still employing them? If 64% of your workforce isn't providing any value worth recognizing, your workforce is far too large.
My calling, system administration, is definitely one where, the better I do my job, the less visible my work is, but it's easy to forget this is not the case for everyone else.