The paucity of quality jobs is apparent among the general population in the United States today. Since the height of the Great Recession, optimism over finding a good job has been decreasing from 48 percent (2007) down to as low as eight percent (2012). Since then, nothing much has really improved.
According to the latest data from Gallup, only 28 percent of Americans say now is a good time to find a quality job, which, despite being a very low number, is the highest since 2008. The same negative sentiment regarding jobs can be found across the political spectrum with 73 percent of Republicans saying now is a bad time to find jobs, 70 percent of Independents and 62 percent of Democrats.
Younger people tend to be more positive about the overall labor market: 43 percent of those aged 18 to 29 say it’s a good time, but older demographics say quite the opposite, especially individuals older than 50 years of age (20 percent).
“Americans now rate unemployment, along with dysfunctional government and the economy in general, as the most important problems facing the country,” Gallup wrote in its conclusion. “The data reported here, showing that fewer than three in 10 Americans say it is a good time to find a quality job, reinforce the public’s decidedly negative views of the jobs situation today.”
This polling data comes as more Americans sought unemployment benefits and rose an additional 5,000 last week to 320,000, a number that is close to the pre-recession levels.
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has reaffirmed her commitment several times to create jobs. “I promise to never forget the individual lives, experiences and challenges that lie behind the statistics we use to gauge the health of the economy,” said Yellen in a swearing-in ceremony earlier this month.
Despite the official unemployment rate standing at 6.7 percent, a lot of economists concur that the real jobless figure stands somewhere between the low- and mid-20s. This is so because the jobs figures omit certain data, such as not including part-time workers, those who have given up looking for work and individuals who have left the labor market.
In fact, according to Shadow Stats, if the federal government measured unemployment the way the U.S. did during the time of the Great Depression then the numbers would be dramatically higher than what is told to the American people.
We reported Tuesday of how the employment situation is immensely hurting teenagers and young adults. A report from the Brookings Institute noted that teen employment is at its lowest since after the Second World War.
Nice pessimistic view you’ve got here. Considering the title of the page I’m on… “ECONOMIC COLLAPSE NEWS” I’ll have to assume that the authors and editors here are in no way shape or form hoping for recovery. Considering the critical importance of key factors such as consumer confidence, business confidence and investor confidence, one can only assume that the pessimism spread by sites like this one are at the very least somewhat detrimental to said recovery. The question is: Are the authors and editors here truly ignorant of their potential influence or actually traitors, intentionally attacking our economy? Considering the political and economic slant of this page, I’m guessing that it’s the later.