America's job market optimism gap is the worst in the world
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Young Americans have a gloomier outlook on their job prospects than their older colleagues, creating a wider optimism gap than any other country surveyed by Gallup.
The big picture: The very existence of that chasm between 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.
- Elsewhere, younger people are more positive, or the generations' sentiments are more aligned.
- When President Trump and China's leader Xi Jinping meet this week to discuss the world's two largest economies, they'll already have one thing in common: Their young people are far more discouraged than their parents.
By the numbers: Only 43% of those aged 15 to 34 in the U.S. thought it was a good time to find a job locally in 2025 compared to 64% of those 55 and older — a 21-point gap.
- There is a 12-point gap between China's older and younger generations, and similar divides in Serbia, the UAE, Hong Kong and Norway.
- The global median is a 10-point divide, except it's the older adults who are more pessimistic.
Reality check: Younger Americans rated their job prospects lower earlier in the 2000s, but they were still more positive than older people.
- They were also more positive than a significant share of their peers globally in 2025, ranking 87th out of the 141 countries surveyed.
- In South Korea last year, just 28% of the youth said it was a good time to find a job — but that was on par with the 25% of those 55 and up who agreed.
Zoom in: The biggest drop in positive outlook came from young Americans who have higher education and aren't yet working full time, Benedict Vigers, a senior news writer with Gallup who analyzed the data, says.
- "It's likely that there's a fair amount of sort of AI baked into that decline," he says.
What they're saying: Artificial intelligence gutting entry-level roles and a corporate landscape often heavily reliant on social capital over qualifications contribute to the pessimism, Sam Hiner, the co-founder and executive director of the Young People's Alliance, says.
- "We're cutting the career ladder off at the beginning," Hiner, 23, tells Axios
Case in point: Amelia Sexton, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, tells Axios she applied for 30 summer jobs. She received no response from 25.
- "You speak with your peers, and you realize that every single one of us are competing for the same opportunities," she says.
- Many in her age group feel AI reshaping the job market before they even enter it.
- "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" because of AI, she says.
The bottom line: Young Americans have been this bummed out before — but now, U.S. young folks are the most jaded over the job market while their elders' optimism remains more buoyant.
Methodology: The 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 Dec. 5.
For the total sample of national adults in 2025, the margin of sampling error ranges between ±2.2 and ±5.5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
Go deeper: Where new grads are finding jobs
