Unemployment and Underemployment in Manufacturing Workers: A Psychology of Working Perspective

The goal of the current study was to conduct qualitative interviews with manufacturing workers to (a) explore how unemployed and underemployed manufacturing workers understand and describe their experience of working in the industry; (b) investigate the supports, constraints, or pathways that affect access to decent work; and (c) inform psychology of working theory (PWT) with a bottom-up approach. Many of the participants’ experiences were consistent with PWT, including structural conditions (e.g., racism, sexism) shaping access to decent work, which in turn facilitated basic need satisfaction and well-being. However, several novel themes emerged, such as expanding conceptualizations of decent work to include work precarity (e.g., temporary agency work) and good work (e.g., person-environment fit), acknowledging the role of strengths and values, examining the dynamic and bidirectional relations in the PWT model, and incorporating workers’ microsystems (e.g., providing for family).