Americans Not Terribly Worried About Jobs Report

The jobs report last Friday, which covered unemployment in the United States, showed that the economy only added 69,000 jobs. The number was below almost all expectations and was front page news on every major newspaper and at every major news site.

It turns out that many Americans took the news with a shrug. They felt that the reports were barely important, according to new data from Gallup.

In a new poll, the large research firm found:

Despite extensive news coverage of what was widely portrayed as a disappointing government jobs report last Friday, Americans are about as likely to describe it as “mixed” (40%) as to say it is “negative” (42%), with a small minority characterizing it as “positive” (9%). But Americans who view the report as negative are more likely to say it was somewhat negative rather than very negative.

Either many Americans are blind, or they still believe that there are better days ahead, that the May numbers were a bump and not part of a long-term trend.

Why would many Americans brush the report aside? It may be that they have become so used to high unemployment, low housing prices and no action by the federal government to take a hand in improving the economy that they look at the current situation as a long-term status quo. That is something of a loss of hope, but also a dose of reality.

Methodology: Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted June 5, 2012, on the Gallup Daily tracking survey, with a random sample of 1,007 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Douglas A. McIntyre