Access to the Latent Benefits of Employment for Unemployed and Underemployed Individuals 1

A sample of job seekers (N = 161) were assessed on measures of well-being and the latent benefits of employment. The unemployed reported less access to the latent benefits than the underemployed. In a finer grained analysis, there was a monotonic increase from least to most access to the latent benefits from those with no paid work in the past three months, some paid work in the past three months, some current paid work, to those with considerable current paid work. Despite this, no differences in well-being were found.