It’s not difficult to understand that the status of the job market and the optimism of American workers goes hand in hand. When the job market is weak, American’s optimism of finding a job is weakened as well. That said, it is great news to hear that the optimism of American workers has significantly increased in the month of March.
Last month, reports claimed that only 12 percent of people believed that now was a good time to get a job. This statistics shouldn’t be surprising since we know the unemployment levels were very high. However, the Politico released in an article that the percentage of Americans that are optimistic about the job market, or believe that now is a good time to find work, increased to 19 percent. Granted, when looked at from the grand scheme of things, this number is still depressingly low, but a seven percent increase in a month is a significant different and must be noted.
When looked at from the opposite side, saying 78 percent of Americans believe that now is a bad time to find a job, the statistics are still better than they were. In fact, this is the lowest percentage of pessimism on the job market that we have seen since September of 2008. So for three years, more than 78 percent of Americans believed it was a bad time to try and find a job. Knowing all of the job market knowledge you know from Spark News, the reasons for such pessimism are obvious.
What’s more interesting about the statistics from the Politico though are the statistics of optimism in 18 to 29-year-olds. Even though news and statistics both show that this is the group that is struggling the most, they are the most optimistic with 29 percent of them believing it’s a good time to find a job. This is significantly higher than the 13 percent of people aged 50 to 64 that think the same thing. The statistics between men and women are almost as close as the ones for young adults and older adults. According to the poll, 23 percent of men are optimistic about the job market and only 15 percent of women would say the same thing.
This difference in optimism among genders may be a result of the speed of recession recovery. A while back, Spark News reported on statistics that showed how men were recovering from the recession much faster than women. This was likely due to the type of jobs that men and women have. According to some experts, the jobs men have were hit right away by the recession while women’s took a bit longer to feel the effect. Respectively, men were much quicker to recover from the recession since they were hit before women. Women in the workforce have just now started to pick up speed on their recession recovery, so there optimism is like to be a result of that. ‘
Either way, as Americans become more optimistic about their jobs security and job future, chances are they will be more confident in their spending and the economy. With increased optimism comes increased spending and a stronger, easy flowing economy. Hopefully the optimism on the job market can continue to increase and we can really get the ball rolling on full job market and economy recovery.
SOURCE: Politico
IMAGE: Courtesy of Flathead Beacon
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