Americans' confidence in their job security has gone from a record high to an all-time low

Before the coronavirus pandemic, Americans were feeling pretty good about their job security, an annual Gallup showed. Now, that confidence is all but gone.

For the past 45 years, Gallup has conducted surveys to get a sense of how fearful Americans were about getting laid off within 12 months. In 2019, 8 percent of those surveyed were afraid of losing their jobs. That's not an insignificant amount by any means, but it did match an all-time low since Gallup began tracking responses to this particular question.

Flash forward a year into the middle of the pandemic. The number has more than tripled — 25 percent Americans think they could be out of a job within the next 12 months, Gallup's latest poll released Wednesday showed. That's the highest mark since the poll began, surpassing a previous peak of 21 percent during the 2008 financial crisis.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The Gallup poll was based on telephone interviews between April 1-14. A random sample of 540 adults living in the United States was surveyed. The margin of error was 5 percentage points. Read more at Gallup.