Three out of five Americans who are unemployed or underemployed don’t expect to find work in the next month, according to a new Gallup poll.
Gallup surveyed more than 4,000 adults throughout January. Some of the other findings:
- Among the underemployed — people working part-time but want full-time work — who say their companies are hiring, only 42% are hopeful about getting full-time hours.
- Almost two-thirds of people with a college degree or postgraduate education aren’t hopeful about finding work — making them the least likely to be hopeful among educational groups.
- Almost three out of four underemployed Americans ages 50 to 65 aren’t hopeful about finding a job within a month, making them the demographic group with the lowest likelihood of being hopeful. Gallup found that 46% of blacks and the same share of people ages 18 to 29 are likely to be hopeful, making them the demographic groups most likely to be hopeful.
- One area where hope made little difference: having enough money. Among both groups (hopeful and not hopeful), more than one in three said they did not have enough money to pay for food in the past year. More than one out of three said the same about health care. One in five said they did not have enough money for shelter in the past 12 months.
In another set of data released Tuesday, Gallup found that the underemployed reported spending 36% less than those employed — $48 per day vs. $75.