Forty-two percent of Americans said it was a good time to find a quality job in 2015, the highest such number since 2007, according to a Gallup poll released on Thursday.
Indeed, the number of those with a rosy outlook on whether it is a good time to find a quality job is up substantially from averages near 10 percent from 2009 through 2011. Gallup began asking this question in August 2001, and the annual average saying it is a good time to find a quality job has been higher than 40 percent only three times -- in 2006, 2007 and now in 2015, Gallup found.
Optimism about quality job prospects dropped dramatically between 2007 and 2008 and bottomed out at an average of 10 percent in 2009. Each year since then, job market assessments have improved at least slightly. The largest increase was evident in the past year, during which unemployment levels have been the lowest since 2007, Gallup found.
On a monthly level, the percentage of Americans who said it was a good time to find a quality job reached as high as 45 percent in January and September 2015, slightly below the all-time high of 48 percent in January 2007, according to Gallup. One's political affiliation greatly influences assessments of the job market, as a majority of Democrats, at 53 percent, say now is a good time to find a quality job, compared with 32 percent of Republicans and 40 percent of independents.
Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to say it is a good time to find a quality job than whites. And younger Americans are more likely to be optimistic than older Americans, according to the poll.
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