Involuntary job loss poses at least two major, simultaneous challenges: coping with the psychological fallout of the loss as well as finding new work. Research on coping with unemployment has often emphasized the job search process, equating it with “problem-focused” coping. By contrast, while the psychological toll also represents a real problem for many unemployed persons, efforts to cope with the myriad non-search aspects of job loss (e.g., changes in social, temporal, and financial conditions) have often been considered as “emotion-focused,” “symptom-focused,” or “escape-oriented”, implying that such coping is somehow ancillary to, or even at odds with, the aims of re-employment. Extending the social cognitive model of career self-management (CSM; Lent & Brown, 2013) to the study of job loss, we examined psychological and job search coping strategies in conjunction with selected person and contextual factors that can aid or hinder the coping process. The project included development of a new coping strategies measure, the Coping with Unemployment Scales (CUES). A sample of 512 early to mid-career unemployed workers in the U.S. completed an online survey including measures of coping, social support, financial strain, proactive personality, and three criterion variables: emotional well-being, psychological distress, and job search progress. A structural path analysis of the CSM model yielded good fit to the data. The coping strategies contributed uniquely to the prediction of the emotional functioning and job search progress criteria. We consider the implications of the findings for future inquiry on job loss coping.

非自愿失业至少带来两个主要的、同时存在的挑战：应对失业带来的心理影响以及寻找新工作。关于应对失业的研究经常强调求职过程，将其等同于“以问题为中心”的应对方式。相比之下，虽然心理损失对许多失业者来说也是一个真正的问题，但应对失业的无数非搜索方面（例如社会、时间和财务状况的变化）的努力通常被认为是“情感”。 “以症状为中心”、“以症状为中心”或“以逃避为导向”，暗示这种应对方式在某种程度上辅助，甚至与再就业的目标相矛盾。将职业自我管理的社会认知模型（CSM；Lent & Brown，2013）扩展到失业研究，我们结合选定的人和可以帮助或阻碍应对过程的背景因素，研究了心理和求职应对策略。该项目包括制定新的应对策略措施，即应对失业量表（CUES）。美国 512 名处于职业生涯早期到中期的失业工人样本完成了一项在线调查，包括应对措施、社会支持、财务压力、主动性格以及三个标准变量：情绪健康、心理困扰和求职进度。CSM 模型的结构路径分析得到了与数据的良好拟合。应对策略对情绪功能和求职进展标准的预测做出了独特的贡献。我们考虑研究结果对未来失业应对调查的影响。