Young Americans’ views of the local job market have deteriorated sharply, even as older Americans remain more upbeat, according to a Gallup World Poll analysis released Monday. The results, based on surveys conducted in 141 countries, point to a widening generational split in the United States on whether people believe it is a good time to find work where they live.
In the U.S., 43% of those ages 15 to 34 said it is “a good time” to find a job in their local job market, compared with 64% of people 55 and older. Gallup said the difference between the two age groups in the United States is the largest among the countries surveyed, with younger adults ranking 87th globally in job market expectations—despite a longstanding pattern of greater optimism among young Americans.
The analysis also found a contrast with the rest of the world. Gallup reported that globally the median share of younger people who say it is a good time to find work locally is 48%, compared with 38% among older people, suggesting that in most places younger adults retain more confidence than older ones.
Benedict Vigers, of Gallup, described the U.S. shift as a recent departure from historical patterns. Vigers said it was “an incredibly new phenomenon” and added that last year was the first time Gallup’s decades of polling showed young Americans were more pessimistic about the job market than their peers in other developed countries, calling it “a resounding no” that the trend was happening across most other advanced economies.
Gallup’s analysis suggested the change arrived abruptly. It reported that every U.S. age group registered a drop in job-market confidence after 2023 following a rebound in 2021 and 2022, but that adults 34 and younger saw the largest decline in recent years. Gallup said the share of young Americans saying it was a “good time” to find a job plunged by 27 percentage points from 2023 to 2025, and said that magnitude was comparable to declines seen during the 2008 global financial crisis, though older Americans’ views have “barely dropped” in the last few years.
The Gallup analysis also examined who among young adults is most affected. It found the most frustrated groups were people who had not yet secured a first job, college graduates, and young women, while saying the heightened pessimism spreads across younger subgroups including men and those who had not attended college.
The report connected the shifts in perceptions of opportunity to broader economic mood and politics, citing separate AP-NORC polling on general views of the U.S. economy. It said about 8 in 10 adults under 35 described the U.S. economy as very or somewhat poor in an AP-NORC poll conducted in April, while about 6 in 10 adults 55 and older said the same, though a majority in both groups viewed the economy negatively.
John Della Volpe, a pollster who surveys U.S. youth for Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, said the frustration reflects a sense that younger people feel previous generations do not understand the economic challenges they face. He said the feeling can “drain their mental health,” describing young adults saying, “my parents don’t understand that their pathway at this stage in life that I’m in was so much easier.”
The Gallup report said younger Americans’ job-market expectations now approach the levels seen in 2010, when the country was still deep in the Great Recession. It said Gallup has also found that pessimism about perceived job prospects emerged at the end of 2024 and continued into 2025, aligning with the start of President Donald Trump’s second term and with rising concern about artificial intelligence’s potential impact on labor markets and entry-level jobs.
The report further said older Americans’ more favorable assessment is partly related to retirement and less likelihood of actively looking for work, and to higher rates of homeownership among older adults. It also said that while day-to-day financial concerns were a key issue in the 2024 election for younger voters and Trump improved his performance with the group, recent AP-NORC polling found that as inflation has continued, some younger Americans have soured on him. The report said about 8 in 10 adults under 35 disapprove of how Trump is handling the economy and cost of living, compared with about 6 in 10 older adults.