World Still Not Optimistic About Job Hunting
1 July 2013 at 12:07 pm
The emerging markets of Thailand and Saudi Arabia led the world on job optimism last year, with a large percentage of residents believing it was a good time to find a job- but the majority of the world, especially Europe, was blanketed by negativity.
A Gallup study, conducted in 2012, with results released on June 21, 2013, surveyed 141, 000 people aged 15 years or older in 141 countries in order to find global views toward the job market.
Almost three quarters of respondents (73%) in Thailand and Saudi Arabia said it was a good time to find a job. The optimism in Thailand came amid strong domestic demand last year, which bolstered the nation's economic performance, according to the study.
For Saudi Arabia and other energy-rich countries such as Kuwait, Qatar, Venezuela, and, to a lesser extent, Turkmenistan, historically high oil prices last year were the most likely contributor to bright employment prospects.
The Americas was also optimistic about the job market, with 40% of survey respondents saying it was a good time to find a job.
Europe was deemed the ‘pessimist’ of the world, with 75% of Europeans claiming it was a bad time to find work. European countries who used the Euro were most pessimistic about finding a job, particularly in countries with growing debts.
An overwhelming majority of respondents in Greece (98%) , Italy (95%), and Spain (94%) were negative about finding a job- deeming them among the worst places to find a job last year, according to the study.
The Gallup study found job perceptions across the world did not improve in 2012, despite most countries continuing to recover from the global financial crisis.
The world's largest or most advanced economies were among the places where residents were most pessimistic about the job market, according to the report.
In particular, job pessimism had blanketed nearly every part of Europe, the world's second-richest continent, the study found.
Even China, which has experienced consistently high growth since the turn of the century, was upside-down on job-optimism with only 37% of respondents believing it was a good time to find work while 55% of respondents said it was a bad time to find work.
Click here to view the full Gallup report.
