Category Archives: Unemployment
The long-term unemployed and their employability (IO Psychology)
The long-term unemployed face many barriers to finding work, and the longer they spend without a job, the more negative consequences they will face. They may lose motivation or job skills, they may lose contact with their networks, and there is certainly a stigma attached to being unemployed for a long time.
A recent study in the Netherlands looked at the employability of the long-term unemployed. In this case, employability consisted of four dimensions: adaptability (career exploration, career planning), social capital (the person’s social skills and social network), human capital (experience, training, knowledge, skills), and career identity (work values, motivation to work).
The authors found that employability of the long-term unemployed (specifically, adaptability and career identity) predicted job search intensity. Job search intensity, social capital, human capital, and career identity also predicted reemployment. When participants received an intervention aimed at increasing their employability, they were able to slightly increase their human capital, career identity, and adaptability (but not their social capital).
These results indicate that focusing on the employability of the long-term unemployed may increase their job search intensity and their likelihood of getting a job. It’s not a lost cause. In addition, programs that aim to help find work for the long-term unemployed should consider first assessing the person’s employability.
The Unemployment Blues may be More Serious than You Think!
Topic: Unemployment, Wellness
Publication: Journal of Vocational Behavior
Article: Unemployment impairs mental health: Meta-analyses.
Author: K.I. Paul, K. Moser
Featured by: Benjamin Granger
Does unemployment CAUSE poor mental health? After all, isn’t it possible that poor mental health can cause unemployment? Seriously, what employer wants to hire a distressed, anxious, depressed employee with low self-esteem?
In an attempt to arrive at a firm conclusion about whether unemployment actually causes changes in mental health, Paul and Moser (2009) report on the results of two meta-analyses that included 237 cross-sectional studies as well as 87 longitudinal studies. In addition to their primary goal of uncovering the causal link between unemployment and mental health, the researchers also investigated a number of factors that might affect unemployment’s role in predicting mental health.
Overall, Paul and Moser’s results suggest that unemployement does indeed have a negative influence on mental health outcomes (e.g., symptoms of distress, anxiety, depression, self-esteem). If this seems obvious, Paul and Moser also uncovered several factors that make some individuals more prone to poor mental health during unemployment. For example, the negative effects of unemployment were greater for men than for women, greater for blue collar workers than white collar workers, and greater for the long-term unemployed than the short-term unemployed.
But most interesting of all, the results of the meta-analysis on the longitudinal studies lend strong support for the long held assumption that unemployment does indeed cause changes to mental health! Across many studies, losing one’s job leads to a subsequent decrease in mental health. However, once individuals become re-employed, their mental health improves substantially. And importantly, intervention programs were found to positively influence the mental health of unemployed individuals (finally some good news!). The upshot here is that unemployment can have a very serious impact on individuals’ mental health, especially when long-term,and more so for men and blue collar workers.
Fortunately, the results of this meta-analysis also suggest that interventions can help the unemployed (although the specific nature of these interventions is not made explicit in the article – they may have differed substantially).
