If you ask around, about one in five Americans (19 percent) will tell you that unemployment is the most important problem facing the United States. According to the same poll, conducted by Gallup in March, 17 percent cite the economy
in general as the most important problem — which is a bucket that
ostensibly contains the unemployment problem — and 3 percent cite simply
a “lack of money,” also presumably a function of employment, be it unemployment, underemployment or wage stagnation.
The moral of the story is that a large number of Americans believe that the U.S. job market
is FUBAR. According to a separate Gallup poll, just 28 percent of
Americans believe that now is a good time to find a quality job.
Granted, this is the highest level seen since the financial crisis, but it’s still dismal. As President Barack Obama put it in his 2014 State of the Union address, ”the best measure of opportunity is access to a good job,” and an economy without opportunity is hardly an economy worth participating in.
