{"id":493329,"date":"2026-03-24T22:04:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T22:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/493329\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T22:04:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T22:04:18","slug":"job-market-optimism-has-fallen-since-2022-new-gallup-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/493329\/","title":{"rendered":"Job market optimism has fallen since 2022: New Gallup survey"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Americans\u2019 outlook on the job market has turned increasingly pessimistic, a surprisingly negative shift given the low unemployment rate<\/a> but one that likely reflects an ongoing hiring drought<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Just 28% of workers in a quarterly Gallup survey conducted late last year<\/a> said now is a \u201cgood time\u201d to find a quality job, with 72% saying it is a bad time. Those figures are a sharp reversal from just a few years ago, in mid-2022, when 70% said it was a good time. <\/p>\n

Americans have quickly gotten more pessimistic: As recently as late 2024, just under half of workers still said it was a good time to search for a job. The current survey was conducted during the final three months of 2025, long before the Iran war that has sent oil and gas prices soaring and threatens to slow the economy<\/a> as Americans redirect more of their dollars to filling gas tanks and away from other spending. <\/p>\n

The figures help explain other surveys that show Americans have a largely bleak view of the economy, even as many headline measures suggest it has been growing<\/a> and job losses are low. <\/p>\n

College graduates are especially gloomy<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n AP AUDIO: It\u2019s a bad time to hunt for new jobs, most US workers say in new Gallup poll\n <\/p>\n

Americans have become more pessimistic about the job market. AP correspondent Mike Hempen reports.<\/p>\n

Job pessimism is especially pronounced among college graduates. The shift is likely because hiring in many white-collar professions has been unusually weak for the past two years, in areas such as software, customer service and advertising. <\/p>\n

The survey found a split based on education levels, with just 19% of workers with a college degree thinking that now is a good time to find a quality job, while 35% of workers without a college degree are optimistic. <\/p>\n

A separate Gallup survey<\/a> of U.S. adults overall found that college graduates\u2019 optimism about the job market is the lowest it\u2019s been since 2013. Meanwhile, the gap in job market sentiment between Americans with and without a college degree was at its widest in that survey since Gallup started asking the question in 2001.<\/p>\n

Signs of broad discontent among young workers<\/p>\n

Just about 2 in 10 workers ages 18-34 think now is a good time to find a job, compared to about 4 in 10 workers ages 65 and older who say the same. <\/p>\n

Gallup\u2019s survey is consistent with what economists call the \u201clow-hire, low-fire\u201d<\/a> job market: Businesses are largely holding onto their workers and measures of layoffs remain quite low<\/a>. As a result, older workers are largely secure in their jobs. But hiring is also quite sluggish, making it harder for younger workers to break in and find permanent work. <\/p>\n

It also found that younger workers are much likelier than older workers to say they\u2019re actively looking for a new job or watching for opportunities. Most Gen Z and Millennial workers say they\u2019re at least watching for opportunities, while about three-quarters of baby boomers say they\u2019re not looking at all.<\/p>\n

Other surveys signal negative economic views<\/p>\n

The Gallup results come as government data shows that overall hiring is at its weakest level in more than a decade. The Labor Department tracks a \u201chiring rate,\u201d or the proportion of people who are hired each month as a percent of those with jobs. The hiring rate dropped to 3.2% last November, around when Gallup conducted its survey, the lowest since March 2013. It was 3.9% before the pandemic.<\/p>\n

A hiring rate at that 3.2% is quite low: When it was last reached in March 2013, the unemployment rate was 7.5%, as millions of Americans were still struggling to find work after the 2008-2009 Great Recession. It suggests it is much harder to find a job now than the unemployment rate would indicate. <\/p>\n

Government data also shows that there are more unemployed people \u2014 7.4 million \u2014 than available jobs, at 6.9 million. That is a reversal from the first few years after the pandemic, when vacancies outnumbered those out of work. <\/p>\n

Gallup\u2019s survey also found that workers have a dimmer view<\/a> of their current life and future prospects than at any point since 2009, when the firm began measuring the workforce\u2019s life evaluations.<\/p>\n

Other surveys echo Americans\u2019 generally dark view of the economy. The Conference Board\u2019s consumer confidence survey<\/a> was just 91.2 in February, not far from its pandemic-era lows and down from nearly 130 before the pandemic. <\/p>\n

More people believe jobs are \u201ceasy to get\u201d than \u201chard to find,\u201d the Conference Board\u2019s survey finds, but the gap has narrowed steadily in recent years.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

The Gallup poll of 22,368 U.S. adults who are working full-time and part-time for organizations in the U.S. was conducted Oct. 30-Nov. 13, 2025, using a sample drawn from Gallup\u2019s probability-based panel. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 1.0 percentage points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Americans\u2019 outlook on the job market has turned increasingly pessimistic, a surprisingly negative shift given…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5300,84,5301,1294,232,585,6939,2924,229,23194,56,54,55,13702],"class_list":["post-493329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-ap-top-news","tag-business","tag-economic-indicators","tag-economy","tag-general-news","tag-iran","tag-jobs-and-careers","tag-labor","tag-politics","tag-public-opinion","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}