South Korea · Hong Kong · China · Donald Trump · U.S. · Axios
By the numbers: Only 43% of those aged 15 to 34 in the U.S. thought it was a good time
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Reality check: Younger Americans rated their job prospects lower earlier in the 2000s, but they were still more positive than older people.
Key facts
- Case in point: Amelia Sexton, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill she applied for 30 summer jobs
- 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
- 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
- Methodology: The results are based on nationally representative, probability-based samples among populations aged 15 and older in ~140 countries and territories
Summary
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 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. 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.