Nearly half of Americans feel that it is a good time to find a job, the highest since mid-2007 prior to the Great Recession.
The latest Gallup poll found that 45% of Americans said the time is right to find a quality job, up from 36% in December. The poll shows that the public feels optimistic about the economy but still skeptical.
Gallup has been asking people about their views of the job market monthly since August 2001. Positive views dropped to 16% in 2003 but climbed through the real estate boom, hitting 48% in January 2007, the highest recorded.
Optimism about the job market fell with the onset of the recession, reaching an all-time low of 8% in November 2009 and again in November 2011. Since 2012, people’s attitudes have improved as the economy has recovered.
The more upbeat perceptions coincide with other improving numbers. In December, the unemployment rate fell to 5.6%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the lowest since the early months of the recession. Last year, Gallup’s Job Creation Index, which measures employees’ opinions on hiring trends at their companies, hit its highest post-recession levels.
Several factors affect people’s attitudes about the job market, including political affiliation, age and race. The Gallup poll found Democrats (56%) were significantly more positive than Republicans (35%), which is consistent with the tendency for people aligned with the president’s political party to be more positive about the state of the nation than those from an opposing party.
When it comes to age, younger people ages 18 to 34 were more likely to say it’s a good time to find a job (58%) compared with older people ages 35 to 54 (44%). People over 55 were the least positive, with only 35% saying it is a good time to get a job.
Men were more upbeat than women about the job market, with 49% of men saying now is a favorable time to get a job vs. 41% among women. In addition, nonwhite minorities were significantly more upbeat (58%) compared to whites (39%).
Results of the Gallup poll were based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 5-8 with 804 randomly sampled adults ages 18 and older nationwide. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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