Latest Release: 2023 Q4

The ZipRecruiter Job Seeker Confidence Survey

The ZipRecruiter Job Seeker Confidence Survey is a nationally representative quarterly survey of U.S. job seekers that measures how optimistic or pessimistic they are about their ability to land their preferred jobs. Increased confidence is typically an indicator of future increases in employee turnover, wage growth, and labor force participation.

Data Spotlight

⇩ 1.5

Expectations Index

Job seeker optimism about the medium-term labor market outlook edged lower.

⇧ 0.4

Preparedness Index

Job seekers’ confidence in their ability to navigate the job search process was largely unchanged.

⇧ 3.4

Financial Wellbeing Index

Job seekers reported less financial stress and improved financial wellbeing.

⇩ 0.7

Present Situation Index

Job seekers’ appraisals of current job market conditions edged lower.

U.S. Job Seeker Confidence

The ZipRecruiter Job Seeker Confidence Index ticked upwards 0.6 points to 96.1 in Q4 2023 (Index: 2022 Q1 = 100), driven by an improvement in self-reported financial wellbeing. Attitudes and expectations about the current situation and medium-term labor market outlook were mixed.

"Easing inflation, rising real wages, and a rebounding stock market made job seekers feel slightly more confident and less financially stressed in Q4. Nonetheless, most anticipate that the labor market will slow down further in the first half of the year."

— Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter Chief Economist

2023 in Review

Job seeker confidence was stable and resilient in 2023 after declining from its Q2 2022 height. Job seeker reports of financial strain peaked in Q3 2023 but have since eased slightly. As we come to the end of the year, job seekers are worried about the medium-term labor market outlook, with three times as many job seekers expecting the unemployment rate to rise as to fall (49% compared to 16%) in the first half of 2024.

Do Job Seekers Still Have Leverage in the Job Market? 

In early 2022, labor market tightness peaked, as measured by the number of unemployed job seekers per job opening. In ZipRecruiter’s Job Seeker Confidence Survey, various measures of job seeker bargaining power peaked too. For example, 52% of employed job seekers said they thought it was likely or very likely that their current employer would seek to retain them by countering an outside offer. That share has since drifted lower, but not by very much. 45% of employed job seekers still expect their employers to fight for them, giving them an alternative to accepting insufficiently attractive offers from another employer. About 44% of job seekers say they have already received at least one offer, and that share has been stable over the past two years.

Another sign that job seekers have retained considerable leverage despite some cooling in the labor market this year is job seekers’ willingness to negotiate an offer. 25% of job seekers say they feel very confident that they will negotiate a job offer, and 52% of job seekers say they feel somewhat confident that they will do so. Those numbers have changed little over the past two years. The trend is not consistent with the findings of our New Hires Survey, however, which asks workers about their actual job search behavior rather than their expectations. The most recent wave of that survey (Q3 2023) found a marked decline in negotiating behavior, largely driven by the perception gained during the hiring process that the employer would not be open to negotiating.

Job seekers’ wage expectations and demands similarly suggest that they have given up little ground. One in three job seekers expects that real wages will rise over the next six months, and only one in five expects that they will fall (most expect that they will stay the same). The reservation wage—that is, the average lowest wage job seekers say they would accept to take a job—held steady for the first three quarters of the year, and rose in the fourth.

How Many Job Seekers Are Gig Workers?

Official national labor market data have a blind spot when it comes to gig work. The surveys that measure “contingent and alternative employment arrangements” are not fielded regularly, and they only ask about workers’ primary jobs. As a result, they do not capture the full extent of gig work or its trend over time. In the Q4 2023 Job Seeker Confidence Survey, we introduced a new question about gig work that seeks to discover whether job seekers are engaged in the gig economy at all, not only in their primary role. 

We find that 27% of job seekers are engaged in gig work, including 28% of men and 26% of women. Job seekers between the ages of 35 and 44 are most engaged in gig work (33%), and job seekers aged 65 or older are least engaged in it (23%). Engagement also differs across racial and ethnic groups, with only 24% of white job seekers saying they work in the gig economy, compared with 30% of Hispanic job seekers and 35% of black job seekers. 26% of renters, 25% of job seekers who own their homes outright, and 28% of mortgage holders say they perform gig work. 31% of workers whose primary jobs are fully remote also perform some gig work, compared with 16% of workers whose primary jobs are fully in office or onsite. 

How Job Seekers’ Priorities Change As They Age


The labor market stands out as the most heterogeneous market in the economic landscape. Distinct from the market for pizzas or shoes, it is characterized by an extraordinary diversity of jobs, tasks, companies, working environments, job seekers, qualifications, personalities, and preferences. The same job seekers can also change over time as they age. 

While the ZipRecruiter Job Seeker Confidence Survey is not a longitudinal survey—i.e., it does not collect data on the same individuals over an extended period, but rather on different waves of individuals each quarter—it does provide insight into some of the ways that job seeker preferences change with age. Here are some key findings: 

  1. Part-time vs. full-time work: Job seekers are least likely to want part-time work when they are aged 35-44 years, and most likely to want part-time work when they are older. The pattern is the same for men and women, although women are more likely than men to want part-time work at every age. The share of workers who are looking for part-time rather than full-time jobs ranges from 10% of men aged 35-44 to about 80% of women aged 65 and older.


  1. Remote work: By contrast, preference for remote work is fairly stable across age, with 64% of women and 57% of men saying that they would prefer to find a remote job.


  1. Physically demanding jobs: According to a major survey of U.S. workers, 61% of workers perform repetitive or intense physical work. Older workers are substantially more likely to want jobs that are not physically demanding. At younger ages, women are more likely than men to want less physically intensive work, and vice versa at older ages.


  1. Relocation: We asked job seekers to rank their willingness to relocate to another city or state for a job on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 indicating great reluctance to relocate and 10 indicating great eagerness to relocate. Job seekers initially become more willing to relocate for work but then grow less willing to relocate as they age. Self-reported willingness to relocate ranges from 6.2 among men aged 25 to 34 to 2.2 among men aged 65 and older, measured on the scale described. Women are less willing than men to relocate at almost every age.


  1. Social interaction: The youngest and oldest workers are most likely to want opportunities to work with others, whereas prime working-age people tend to be less enthusiastic about workplace social interaction. Women are more likely than men to want social interaction at work at most ages, but less so at older ages.


"Employers often ask me why it’s so hard to hire. The main reason is that U.S. workers have alternatives. Any time you’re interviewing candidates, 44% already have offers from other employers, and 45% believe their current employer will compete with your offer in order to retain them."

— Ian Siegel, ZipRecruiter CEO

The Survey

The quarterly ZipRecruiter Job Seeker Confidence Survey is based on an online sample and conducted for ZipRecruiter by Qualtrics. It is administered to 2,000+ job seekers between the 10th and 16th of the second month of each quarter and weighted to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Respondents may be employed, unemployed, or not currently in the labor force, but they must reside in the United States and plan to find a new job “in the next six months” in order to be included in the sample.

The ZipRecruiter Index

The overall ZipRecruiter Job Seeker Confidence Index comprises four subindices:

  • The Preparedness Index measures how confident job seekers feel about their job skills, education, and training, as well as about their job search skills—that is, their ability to find relevant positions, develop application materials, and interview effectively.

  • The Financial Wellbeing Index measures job seekers’ financial security—that is, whether they have peace of mind about their ability to meet their financial needs, or whether they are searching for work and negotiating job offers under financial pressure.

  • The Expectations Index captures job seekers’ short-term outlook for labor market conditions. It is based on questions about whether job seekers expect the number of available jobs to increase or decrease.

  • The Present Situation Index is based on job seekers’ assessment of current labor market conditions. It is based on questions about whether they expect to get interviews, find a job easily, and get the job they want, and how satisfied they are with their job search.