International Jobs Data: Anxiety, Near Despair

According to new research from Gallup about job market pessimism:

Fifty-seven percent of adults worldwide said it was a bad time to find a job in their local communities last year, unchanged from 2011. One-third said it was a good time to find a job, also mirroring the 2011 figure.

The year 2011 was hardly one of great confidence.

Recession-ravaged Europe remains the global epicenter of job market pessimism: 75% of Europeans said it was a bad time to find work in 2012, more than in any other region. The Americas continued to lead the world in job market optimism: 40% said it was a good time to find a job, and 54% said it was a bad time.

The former Soviet Union, as a region, saw the largest increase last year in the percentage of adults saying it was a good time to find work, with 27% saying this, up four points from the year before.

The 40% in the Americas cannot be a signal of any overall optimism.

These results signal what many economists are nervous about, which is that, in the minds of many people, the recession never ended. In the United States, real wages have not moved higher for more than a decade. Jobs are increasingly either temporary or they carry no benefits. The unemployment rate may be down, but only to to 7.6%. It has been at that level or higher since January 2009, with the sole exception of April when the figure was 7.5%. And, in May, the number of people “employed part time for economic reasons” was 7.9 million.

The International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other agencies that offer forecasts for gross domestic product from region to region recently have dropped their growth rate forecasts for most of the world. That goes hand in hand with employment concerns. Together they show that, if the recession is over, someone did not tell most people.

Methodology: Results are based on telephone and face-to-face interviews with approximately 1,000 adults per country, aged 15 and older, conducted in 141 countries and areas in 2012.