Americans are growing more pessimistic about the job market, even as unemployment remains low, in a shift that signals a slowdown in hiring, according to a recent Gallup survey.
The survey, conducted by Gallup from Oct. 30 to Nov. 13, 2025, included 22,368 U.S. adults working full time and part time. The sample was drawn from Gallup’s probability-based panel and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.
The findings show that 72% of respondents say it is not a “good time” to find a quality job, while 28% say it is. That marks a sharp reversal from mid-2022, when about 70% said it was a good time to look for work.
As recently as late 2024, just around half of the surveyed workers still said it was a good time for job switching. The current survey was conducted during the final three months of 2025, long before the Iran war that has sent oil and gas prices soaring, threatening to slow the economy. Americans are now redirecting most of their dollars to filling gas tanks, and staying away from other expenditure.
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The job despair is especially notable among college graduates. The shift in confidence might be affected by the fact that many white-collar professions have been unusually weak for the past two years. Areas such as software, customer service and advertising are widely hit.
The survey also found differences by education level. Just 19% of workers with a college degree said it is a good time to find a quality job, compared with 35% of those without a college degree.
A separate Gallup survey among U.S. adults shows that college graduates are more pessimistic about the job market, the lowest it’s been since 2013. Nevertheless, the disparity in the job market sentiment between Americans with and without a college degree was at its highest in that survey since the organization started surveying in 2001.
Within the age group of 18-34, just about 2 in 10 workers think now is a good time to find a job. However, about 4 in 10 workers aged 65 and older say the same.
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The Gallup survey comes at a time when the government data officially admits that overall hiring is at its weakest level in more than a decade. The U.S. Department of Labor monitors a “hiring rate,” the proportion of people who are hired each month over a percentage of those with jobs. The hiring rate declined to 3.2% in November 2025, right around when this survey was conducted. This is the lowest since March 2013. It was 3.9% before the pandemic.
The hiring rate at 3.2% is drastically low. Government data also reveals that there are more unemployed people than available jobs. A considerable population of 7.4 million upholds the 6.9 million jobs available to them. That is a reverse scenario from the initial few years following the pandemic, where vacancies outnumbered those actually working.
The survey highlights that workers have a weaker confidence in their current life and prospects than at any point compared to 2009, when Gallup began to measure the workforce’s life evaluations.