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Finding a Job is Getting Easier. Really.

Published: Jan 29, 2010

As January draws to a close, attention once again begins turning to the number: as in, what will the unemployment number for January be, when it's finally released?

Here at Pink Slipped, though, we have a slightly different idea of what's important when it comes to jobs: to us, it's less important to know how many people are unemployed than how easy it is for people to find work. While that may be subjective, it's far closer to being a leading economic indicator than the unemployment figure, which merely totals up the casualties.

As such, we've compiled the results from our second "jobseeker sentiment" poll (which we post on an occasional basis on our home page), and they make interesting reading indeed:

job seeker sentiment Jan

As is clear from the results, people are feeling optimistic about the economy entering 2010. More than 50 percent of respondents believe that it's easier to find work now than it was three months ago, with less than a quarter professing a decidedly negative opinion. And that sense of optimism seems to be building. Compare those results to the ones we saw when we first conducted the poll back in November:

job seeker sentiment Nov

Whatever the unemployment numbers might say in the coming weeks, it's clear from these figures that sentiment is trending to the optimistic end of the scale among job seekers, with a 16 percent swing in the number of respondents reporting "better" job seeking conditions than two months previously. Let's hope—for all our sakes—that their optimism isn't unfounded.

--Posted by Phil Stott, Vault.com

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