Out of Work, Out of Spirit? The Effects of Unemployment Duration on Young People’s Intrinsic Work Motivation

Unemployment in early career stages has been found to have lasting negative effects on future careers. The culture of worklessness theory attributes these after-effects to a decreasing intrinsic work motivation during unemployment. However, empirical evidence regarding the impact of prolonged unemployment on the intrinsic work motivation of young people is scarce. Drawing on a sample of young adults who were interviewed twice—once at the beginning of an unemployment spell and again one year later—we examine how intrinsic work motivation changed during this period. We use change score models to estimate the effects of unemployment duration, re-employment status, and—for those re-employed—the quality of the new job. In contrast to the culture of worklessness theory, but in line with Jahoda’s theory of latent deprivation, we find that longer unemployment durations induce an overall increase in intrinsic work motivation—especially for those who were no longer unemployed at the time of the second interview and whose new jobs were of higher intrinsic quality than the previous ones. Our findings challenge the idea that prolonged unemployment feeds a self-reinforcing circle of demotivation, highlighting instead the need for intrinsically motivating jobs for young people.