The Relationships between the Job Market Involution Atmosphere, Emotional Exhaustion, Cynicism, and Job Search Lying-Flat Behavior Among Young People: The Moderating Role of Competitive Orientations

Background: The mismatch of supply and demand sides of the labor market and the parallel increased qualification of job seekers fueled the irrational competition atmosphere in the job market. Ideally, young people should engage in the competition, yet avoidance behavior was adopted instead, and they claimed to be lying flat for job searching. Grounded in the conservation of resources theory, this conflicting reaction likely stems from emotional resources being exhausted and accompanied by cynicism after dealing with the hyper-competition stressor. Moreover, those with different competitive attitudes may be different in adapting to this atmosphere. This research examined the relationship between job market involution and lying flat behavior among young people with different competitive attitudes and examined the sequential mediating role of emotional exhaustion and cynicism.

Methods: We recruited college students from various school forums and social media platforms to fill out an online survey. A total of 1395 college students were recruited who completed the survey in full and passed the attention check questions (54.3 % female; Mage = 23.18; SDage = 1.98).

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine whether emotional exhaustion and cynicism would mediate the association of job market involution atmosphere with job search lying-flat behavior. In addition, a latent moderated structural equation modeling approach (LMS) was conducted to examine which competitive attitudes could moderate the associations of job market involution atmosphere with emotional exhaustion and cynicism.

Results: The results showed that the proposed sequential mediation model was supported, in which the job market involution atmosphere was associated with increased lying-flat behavior, and this association was mediated by emotional exhaustion and cynicism. Additionally, the hyper-competitive orientation weakened the indirect effect of the job market involution atmosphere on job search avoidance behavior via emotional exhaustion and cynicism.

Implications: This study provides crucial insights for integrating emotion respite support, while guiding young people to reconstruct and reflect on the purpose of competition and job search into career counselling to encourage young people to take active job search behavior under the hyper-competitive labor market. Given that the involution atmosphere is detrimental to career sustainable development, our findings call for social policies to direct and support job seekers toward positions with skills shortages.