Job Seekers’ Burnout and Engagement: A Qualitative Study of Long-Term Unemployment in Italy

Long-term unemployment has major consequences from an economic, physical and psychosocial perspective. Several authors have pointed out that the search for employment is in itself work, which can generate feelings of exhaustion of psychophysical energies, cynicism and disinvestment, as well as a sense of ineffectiveness to the point of complete disillusion. The construct of burnout can be used to describe this psychological process. This study evaluated the burnout and engagement dimensions in individuals searching for work for a long time, from a qualitative perspective. Fifty-six semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of long-term unemployed job seekers (Sardinia, Italy), based on Maslach’s model of burnout (exhaustion, cynicism, effectiveness in job search). The answers to the semi-structured interviews were processed through T-Lab, a semi-automatic textual analysis software. Four thematic cores emerged: exhaustion vs. engagement, cynicism vs. trust, inefficacy vs. efficacy in job search and disillusion vs. hope. This result is consistent with the four-dimensional theoretical model of burnout, originally proposed by Edelwich and Brodsky, recently taken up by Santinello, and framed as the opposite of engagement, as shown in the JD-R model. This study highlights that burnout can describe the psychosocial experiences of long-term unemployed job seekers.