Poll shows America's job market optimism gap is worst in world

A poll conducted by Gallup in 141 countries shows America's job market optimism gap is the worst in the world.

The results of the poll feature a line chart showing the share of Americans aged 15-34, 35-54, and 55 and older who say it is a good time to find a job.

The chart starts in 2007 and ends in 2025. In 2009, following the 2008 financial crisis, all three age groups fell together.

The young group dropped 24 percent, while the other groups fell only 11 percent and 9 percent.

Expectations peaked in 2019-22, then declined by 2025.

The poll finds that Americans who are young have a gloomier outlook on their job prospects compared to the older groups.

Young Americans pessimism versus their older colleagues optimism is creating a wider gap than any other country surveyed by Gallup.

Analysts say this gap, showing the opposing views of pessimistic younger Americans and more positive older people, is itself an outlier, with double-digit gaps present only in five other places of the 141 polled.

In other countries of the world, the younger people tend to be more optimistic than the young Americans aged 15 to 34.

The poll shows that in 2025, only 43 percent of young people in the United States thought it was a good time to find a job.

By taking into account the 64 percent share of optimistic middle-aged people who thought it was a good time to find a job, there is a 21-point gap in the US.

In China, there is a 12-point gap. In Serbia, the UAE, Hong Kong, and Norway, the chasm is the same.

The median around the globe is a 10-point divide.

Older adults, who are more pessimistic, are an exception.

Experts attribute the pessimism to the widespread use of Artificial Intelligence.

"It's likely that there's a fair amount of sort of AI baked into that decline," said Gallup's senior analyst, Benedict Vigers.

AI is taking over full-time jobs, especially for those with higher education, analysts say.

According to Sam Hiner, 23, young Americans blame AI for eliminating entry-level roles and a corporate landscape often heavily reliant on social capital over qualifications.

Hiner, who is the co-founder and executive director of the Young People's Alliance, expressed his gloomy outlook on their job prospects to Axios by saying, "We're cutting the career ladder off at the beginning."

Amelia Sexton, 19, says AI is reshaping the job market before we even enter it.

Sexton, who is a sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says that because of AI, people don't know what to do anymore to get a job.

"I'm seeing people in real time, change what they want to do or, not even what they want to do, what they have to do to get a job."

The Gallup poll results are based on nationally representative, probability-based samples among populations aged 15 and older in ~140 countries and territories.

The 2025 results are based on telephone or face-to-face surveys of approximately 1,000 respondents in each country or territory from March 27 to December 5.

The margin of sampling error for the total sample of national adults in 2025 ranges between ±2.2 and ±5.5 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.

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