A recent Gallup survey finds Americans increasingly pessimistic about the job market despite low official unemployment, pointing to more labor-market slack than headline numbers show. Personal stories like the doughnut tactic — where an applicant used in-person outreach after hundreds of online applications produced only two interviews — illustrate that many jobseekers face persistent hiring obstacles. Those experiences help explain why worker sentiment is unusually negative and why long-term effects, like lower birth rates, may follow from economic uncertainty.
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