This is fascinating: It won't surprise you to learn that working people look forward to and are
happiest during the weekend. It might surprise you a little more to learn that the same is true of unemployed people, but that's just what sociologists Cristobal Young and Chaeyoon Lim found. That's because on weekends, people get more time with family and friends:
"Social contact is central to our sense of well-being," Young said. This, the authors find, is what explains much of the weekend happiness and the Monday blues. "People who spend weekends alone get very little of the boost in emotional well-being."
Social time is also important to understanding unemployment, the study finds. People out of work spend most of their extra free time alone. Often, the time is spent doing household chores and watching daytime TV.
"Weekends are a break from unemployment," Young said, "because on Saturday and Sunday, other people are available to spend time with." [...]
"Unemployment is psychologically devastating," said Young, whose previous research found that the emotional effect of job loss is comparable to losing one's home. "People feel a deep need to be able to account for their lives, and unemployment takes that away from them in a fundamental way."
With such low levels of well-being, he noted that, "ironically, the jobless need a weekend experience much more than workers do."
(Disclosure: Cristobal Young and I overlapped by a couple years in grad school.)
And more: