It’s a bad time to hunt for new jobs, a majority of American workers say in a new Gallup poll

WASHINGTON (AP) – Americans’ view of the job market has turned increasingly optimistic, a surprisingly negative change given the low unemployment rate but one that likely reflects an ongoing hiring drought.

Only 28% of workers in a Gallup survey conducted late last year said now is a “good time” to find a high-quality job, while 72% say it’s a bad time. Those numbers are a big change from just a few years ago, in mid-2022, when 70% said it was a good time.

Americans are quickly becoming pessimistic: As recently as 2024, just under half of workers still say it’s a good time to look for a job. The current survey was conducted during the last three months of 2025, long before the Iran war that sent oil and gas prices soaring and threatens to slow the economy as Americans redirect their dollars toward filling gas tanks and away from other spending.

The figures help explain other polls that show Americans have a pessimistic view of the economy, as most news measures suggest it is growing and job losses are low.

Job desperation is especially prominent among college graduates. The shift is possible because hiring in many white-collar jobs has been unusually weak over the past two years, in areas such as software, customer service and advertising.

The survey found a divide based on education levels, as only 19% of workers with a college degree think now is a good time to get a good job, while 35% of workers without a college degree are optimistic.

A separate Gallup survey of US adults overall found that college students’ optimism about the job market is the lowest it has been since 2013. Meanwhile, the gap in job market sentiment between Americans with and without college degrees was the largest in that survey since Gallup first asked the question in 2001.

Almost two in 10 workers aged 18-34 think now is a good time to find a job, compared to around 4 in 10 workers aged 65 and over who say the same.

Gallup’s survey echoes what economists call a “low-wage, low-cost labor market”: Businesses are holding on to their workers and layoffs remain at record lows. As a result, older workers are more secure in their jobs. But hiring is also slow, making it difficult for young workers to break into permanent employment.

It also found that younger workers are more likely than older workers to say they are looking for a new job or looking for opportunities. Most Gen Z and Millennial workers say they are at least looking for opportunities, while nearly three-quarters of baby boomers say they are not looking at all.

Gallup’s results come as government data shows overall employment is at its weakest level in more than a decade. The Department of Labor tracks the “employment rate,” or the number of people employed each month as a percentage of those with jobs. The hiring rate fell to 3.2% last November, when Gallup conducted its survey, the lowest since March 2013. It was 3.9% before the pandemic.

The employment rate at that 3.2% is very 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 Great Recession of 2008-2009. It suggests that it is much harder to find a job now than the unemployment rate would indicate.

Government data also shows that there are more unemployed people – 7.4 million – than there are jobs, 6.9 million. That’s a reversal from the first few years after the pandemic, when job vacancies outnumbered the unemployed.

Gallup’s survey also found that employees have a more bleak view of their current health and future prospects than at any time since 2009, when the company began measuring employee health.

Other polls are consistent with Americans’ negative view of the economy. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence survey was 91.2 in February, not far from its pandemic-era low and down from about 130 before the pandemic.

More people believe jobs are “easy to find” than “hard to find,” a Conference Board survey found, but the gap has grown steadily in recent years.

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A Gallup survey of 22,368 US adults who work full-time and part-time for US organizations was conducted Oct. 30-Nov. 13, 2025, using a sample drawn from a Gallup probability panel. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 1.0 percentage points.