Almost half of Americans believe job market in their region is bad
NEW YORK, N.Y. – Like general political attitudes, attitudes towards the economy are holding steady which, unfortunately, is not good as most of these numbers are on the negative side. First, looking at how President Obama is doing on the economy, three in ten Americans (31%) give him positive ratings on his handling of the economy while seven in ten (69%) give him negative marks. These numbers are unchanged from February.
These are some of the results of The Harris Poll of 2,234 adults surveyed online between March 12 – 17, 2014.
Looking at overall attitudes on the economy, again things are holding mostly steady. One-quarter of U.S. adults
(24%) say they expect the economy to improve in the coming year, while 45% say it will say the same and three
in ten (31%) believe it will get worse.
In February, 26% believed the economy would improve in the coming year, 43% believed it would stay the same and 32% said it would get worse. When this narrows a little to the household’s financial condition, just over one in five Americans (21%) say their household’s financial condition will be better in the next six months, half (52%) say it will stay the same and over one-quarter (27%) believe it will get worse. Again, this is similar to last month when 22% believed their household’s financial condition would get better, 52% believed it would remain the same and 26% said it would get worse.
Attitudes on the Job Market
While there have been promising numbers on the overall economy from economists and some leading
indicators, the one common refrain is that job recovery will lag. Americans’ attitudes on jobs do seem to be
lower than those on the overall economy. Almost half of U.S. adults (47%) say the job market in their region of
the country is bad, with 60% of those in the East and over half in the Midwest (51%) saying this. One in five
Americans (20%) say the current job market in their region is good and one-third (32%) believe it is neither good
nor bad. These numbers are similar to January, when 21% believed the job market in their region was good and
almost half (48%) believed it was bad.
Looking ahead, over half of Americans (55%) believe that the job market in their region of the country will
remain the same over the next six months. Almost one-quarter of U.S. adults (23%) believe the job market will
be better over the next six months and 22% believe it will be worse. In January, 53% of Americans believed the
job market in their region would remain the same, 24% thought it would get better and 23% believed it would
get worse.
