Joblessness and satisfaction with different areas of life

So this is it for me. Jobless. Well, for at least two months and a half anyway until I start my lectureship post at York university. And how do I feel?

Well, quite good actually.

But not so much...

Most of the time, I'm just bored. Why? Well, first thing first, there's not much to do while you're in-between jobs. No income too (that's bad and somewhat predictable). But another thing that I didn't quite expect to come following unemployment...

...that is, my social life has gone down the drain a bit.

So, here it is, in details, this is what normally happen to the level of satisfaction with different areas of your life after unemployment.

First, you'd feel broke (even when income is held constant for you) - and this feeling ain't going away in a few years while you're still unemployed. The vertical line here represents the year of becoming unemployed (and you remain unemployed from T to T+5). Note that these are within-person analysis, i.e. I am tracking your satisfaction from Year 1 to Year 6.

Second, and perhaps more surprisingly, you'd in turn become even less satisfied with your social life! One reason for this may be that employment is probably one of the major sources for having a social life. Without it, it's probably harder to stay friends with those who you used to work with (especially if you're female)...

But not all is lost. Apparently you've got a lot of leisure time - more than you can ever hoped for!

But as a whole, things just can't get any worse for you when you're unemployed...

So, I guess, it's a good thing that I'm only unemployed for 2 months then...

Source: British Household Panel Survey

Paper: Powdthavee, N. 2008. Jobless, Friendless, and Broke? A Longitudinal Study of Satisfaction with Different Areas of Life Following Unemployment, mimeo.