A Harris Poll released on Thursday found that 43 percent of Americans who are unemployed have given up on looking for work.
This figure jumps to an astonishing 59 percent for those who have been out of the workforce for at least two years. Of these individuals, 51 percent have not even had a job interview since 2014.
The poll, which surveyed 1,513 jobless Americans between May 5th and 16th, showed that 83 percent of respondents believe that the U.S. economic landscape is titled to benefit the wealthy.
Bob Funk, the CEO of Express, the firm that conducted the survey in conjunction with Harris Poll, said in a statement that there is a clear need, “to equip people with the skills required for the jobs that are available.”
The study also found that jobless Americans only spend an average of less than 12 hours looking for employment, and two-thirds of jobless individuals don’t take minimum wage jobs because they wouldn’t help out sufficiently financially.
Interestingly, the unemployed do not have a clear favorite for the November presidential election: 27 percent of those surveyed support Hillary Clinton, while 23 percent support Donald Trump.
While the recent jobs report showing unemployment to be at only 4.7 percent is encouraging, there is clearly work to be done. As further evidence of the dilemma of those who are not in the labor force— those excluded from the workforce are not counted in actual unemployment figures— this classification’s ranks grew to a record 94.7 million individuals in May.
