Coping with economic stress: introduction to the special issue

This special issue presents five papers, four empirical and one conceptual, on how people deal with different forms and stages of economic stress. Three manuscripts address coping with job insecurity in one's regular job or in the context of self-employment. These papers focus on the multidimensional nature and the development of insecurity over time, personal and social resources, along with organizational interventions that are helpful in minimizing the aversive effects of insecurity. The remaining two papers address respondents' coping with unemployment and factors that may either motivate people to seek help and search for reemployment or that turn unemployed workers into discouraged workers who are giving up in the face of their dire situation.