For years, younger Americans have been more optimistic about the job market than older Americans, even through the depths of the Great Recession.
But in an abrupt shift, a new poll released Monday finds young people's confidence has plummeted over the past two years while their elders remain more upbeat.
The gap between young and older Americans' views of the job market now is greater than in any other country among the 141 surveyed, according to the Gallup World Poll. In the United States, 43% of those aged 15-34 believe it's "a good time" to find a job in the area where they live, well below the 64% of those aged 55 and over who say the same.
US runs counter to global trend
Around the world, it's the opposite. Globally, the median share of younger people who say it's "a good time" to find work in their local job market is 48%, compared with 38% among older people.
The findings reveal a generational rift in Americans' views of economic opportunity, with young people feeling increasingly downtrodden about job prospects, while older people still largely think it's a good time to find work. The schism is likely to continue fuelling generational divides in politics, where younger voters have focused on economic issues such as housing costs and have registered less faith in institutions.
"It's an incredibly new phenomenon," Benedict Vigers of Gallup said of young Americans' pessimism. He added that last year was the first time in Gallup's decades of polling that young Americans were more pessimistic about the job market than their peers in other developed countries. "Has this happened in most other advanced economies? The answer is a resounding no."
Younger and older Americans differ on how easy it is to find a new job
Young people, with fewer physical limitations and family responsibilities - along with an ability to adapt more quickly than older counterparts - normally are more optimistic about their ability to land work.
But the new Gallup analysis finds the US is one of only five countries where younger people are at least 10 points more pessimistic about the availability of work than older ones, joining China, Hong Kong, Norway, Serbia and the United Arab Emirates.
Among the 141 countries surveyed, younger Americans ranked 87th in job market expectations. Even that is striking, Vigers said, because young Americans have long stood out globally for their optimism about job opportunities. Other countries, such as New Zealand and Canada, had lower levels of optimism among the youngest group, but there was no significant generational divide.
When did the shift in sentiment happen?
The divergence between younger and older Americans happened suddenly. Every US age group registered a drop in confidence in the job market after 2023 following a post-COVID rebound in 2021 and 2022. But those 34 and younger saw the largest decline in recent years. The share of younger Americans saying it was "a good time" to find a job plunged by 27 percentage points from 2023 to 2025. That's comparable to the rate of decline for young people during the 2008 global financial crisis, which also saw a drastic drop in confidence for older Americans. But that hasn't happened in the last few years. In fact, older Americans' views have barely dropped.
Older Americans also have a sunnier view of the economic landscape more generally, according to recent AP-NORC polling. About 8 in 10 adults under 35 describe the U.S. economy as very or somewhat poor, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in April. Only about 6 in 10 adults 55 and older say the same, although a majority still see the US economy negatively.
John Della Volpe, a pollster who regularly surveys US youth for the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics, said young people are frequently frustrated at how prior generations don't understand their current economic challenges.
"It's just another thing that drains their mental health: 'My parents don't understand that their pathway at this stage in life that I'm in was so much easier,'" Della Volpe said.
Optimism approaches Great Recession levels
Younger Americans' job market views now register close to the level they did in 2010, when the country was still deep in the Great Recession. This is not the first Gallup poll to find striking levels of pessimism among young Americans. They also register notably high levels of anxiety about personal finance issues compared with people their age in other countries.
A separate Gallup survey on perceived US job prospects found pessimism emerging at the end of 2024 and continuing into 2025. That coincided with the beginning of President Donald Trump's second term and the rise of artificial intelligence, which many fear will transform the labour market and eliminate many entry-level jobs.
The new poll finds the most frustrated groups of young people are those who haven't secured a first job yet, college graduates and young women. But the heightened pessimism spreads across all subgroups of younger Americans, including men and those who haven't attended college.
"Whoever they are, they are more pessimistic than they were three years ago," Vigers said of young Americans.
The older Americans who have a less dire view of the job market are themselves more likely to be retired and not looking for work. They're also more likely to own their own homes, a longtime building block of American prosperity that has increasingly seemed out of reach to younger people.
The Associated Press
