Job market sentiment hits a six-year low as 2025’s weak hiring shakes worker confidence

Forty-seven percent of workers in the U.S. and Canada said it was a good time to find a job in 2025, down 10 points from the year before and 19 points from 2023, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report. That marks the lowest level of job market confidence since at least 2019. The shift in perception follows a year of historically weak hiring and rising job cuts. U.S. job growth averaged about 50,000 new jobs per month in 2025 — the weakest nonrecession year of job growth since the early 1960s. Over the same period, U.S.-based employers eliminated more than 1.17 million jobs, the highest total since the first year of the pandemic. Inflation remained above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent annual target, compounding pressure on households. Worker sentiment reflects deteriorating labor market conditions despite the absence of a formal recession. Job confidence among Americans and Canadians is now at its lowest level since at least 2019.