WASHINGTON, D.C. — More than one in three Americans (35%) say now is a good time to find a quality job. While not high on an absolute basis, this percentage is the highest since December 2007, the starting point of the Great Recession. The jobs measure has been improving in the past few months, and increased seven percentage points between June and July alone.
The average percentage saying it is a good time to find a quality job is 26% since polling began in 2001, depressed by the lower percentages from 2008 to 2011. Prior to the recession, the August 2001-November 2007 average was 34%, similar to July’s 35% reading. Optimism about finding a quality job has been as high as 48% in early 2007, before the Great Recession began. Gallup did not measure this trend in earlier periods such as the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, when it could have been even higher. Sentiment sank as low as 8% in late 2009 and again in late 2011.
While Americans are as positive about the job market as they have been in more than six years, the majority of Americans, 61%, continue to say it is a bad time to find a quality job. That has improved, however, from the 70% seen in May 2014 and the 90% in November 2011.
