Reversing Job Loss and Enhancing Job-Search

Job loss and unemployment are major stressors in people’s working lives, with negative consequences for the individuals themselves and their families. In this chapter, we describe these negative health and wellbeing consequences. We further outline the benefits of returning to work, emphasizing the importance of suitable and sustainable re-employment. To handle and reverse their precarious situation, unemployed individuals need to engage in self-regulatory coping behaviors. We describe research showing that job search is an effective coping behavior, as its intensity and quality positively affect re-employment success. Finding decent re-employment, however, is not easy and influenced by factors outside the individual’s control. We outline such system, labor market, situational, and stable individual factors in the context of health, job search, and re-employment. These factors help identify specific groups that are hit harder by unemployment and target those who need help in the re-employment process. Further, we identify malleable antecedents that facilitate job search motivation, intensity, and quality. Because job search is difficult and comes with setbacks and rejections, unemployed individuals need to cope with and regulate their emotions to support their mental health. We discuss several individual-level interventions to foster self-regulation of emotions and behavior during the job search process.