Eighty-three percent of people think that it is a “bad time to find a job”, according to a new Gallup Poll. The number is depressing but it is at the best level since October 2008.

“Gallup’s Job Creation Index reached +14 during the week ending March 20 — its highest weekly level since the week ending Sept. 28, 2008. Thirty-two percent of employees nationwide say their companies are hiring and 18% say their companies are letting workers go,” the study reported.

Something is wrong when numbers which are so poor are presented as an improvement. The data and Gallup’s reaction are a sign of how low Americans have set expectations about a real recovery in employment. It may be that three years of relentless and chronic unemployment has numbed most people into thinking the current state of affairs will not improve.

The fear about these numbers is that low expectations usually cause poor results. Americans who seek jobs think they will be hard to find. That gives employers permission to be extremely selective in their hiring. A vicious circle is created and the only thing that will break it is powerful intervention from outside.

The Gallup figures are an indication of how deep cuts in federal spending could harm a recovery in jobs. Even the Congressional Budget Office and Ben Bernanke expect unemployment to remain high for another two or three years. That means the numbers of people who are out of work a year or longer will increase very rapidly. States have already begun to withdraw unemployment benefits because they cannot afford them. Congress is likely to press the federal government to follow suit.

The psychology created by joblessness has become nearly as important as unemployment itself. The chance to get a job may have improved slightly as recent government figures show. The Gallup numbers indicate that most Americans look at the federal numbers and do not find them encouraging. National job creation does not look like it will go above 200,000 a month soon, if the federal labor data is correct. That does very little to offset the months during the recession when 500,000 or more jobs disappeared. Without an intervention, the despair about employment will increase among both the jobseeker and employer. Neither will see a reason to break the joblessness stalemate.

Methodology: Results for Gallup’s “quality job” question are based on telephone interviews conducted March 3-6, 2011, with 1,021 national adults, aged 18 and older, living in the continental U.S., selected using random-digit-dial sampling.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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