Abstract
The COVID-19 outbreak has had a disruptive impact on the academic context and labor market. Indeed, the pandemic shock in such fields has been related to several changes with implications for young people’s careers and well-being. This two-wave longitudinal study, conducted in Italy, aimed to explore the predictiveness of some individual and organizational factors on students’ perceived employability and well-being. A total of 301 Italian students, aged between 18 and 33 (M = 20.63, SD = 1.99), completed a self-report questionnaire measuring career ambition, university reputation, university commitment, technostress related to technology-enhanced learning, perceived employability, and mental well-being at both time points. A path analysis showed that career ambition, university reputation, and organizational commitment positively predicted employability, which, in addition to such variables, positively affected well-being. In contrast, technostress was identified as a risk factor both for students’ perceptions of finding a job and for their well-being. These findings provide a theoretical contribution to a better understanding of the factors involved in undergraduates’ perceived employability and well-being. Moreover, they suggest the need to improve academic-related variables to enhance individuals’ resources in coping with the pandemic challenges.
Highlights
The pandemic has significantly affected all aspects of our lives, including education and work, as highlighted by several reports about the employment rate
Technostress at both T1 and T2 was negatively correlated with mental well-being that was assessed at both T1 and T2, with r ranging from −0.25, p < 0.001, to −0.12, p < 0.05
The present study provides an essential contribution to the current literature on psychosocial factors related to students’ employability perceptions and mental well-being during the third wave of COVID-19
Summary
The pandemic has significantly affected all aspects of our lives, including education and work, as highlighted by several reports about the employment rate. The latter has fallen by 0.7 percentage points in Europe: from 73.1% in 2019 to 72.4% in 2020 [1]. The situation is worrying in Italy since it is ranked among the last European countries in terms of employment rates, with a percentage of 62.6 in 2020 [1]. Of particular concern is the finding regarding the youth unemployment rate: the average European rate is 15.4%. The highest rates were recorded in Spain (29.2%), Italy (28%), and Greece (39.1%) [2]. As underlined by studies on COVID-19 and mental health, anxiety symptoms have been reported to be moderate to severe by almost one-third of the population [3], and young people have been regarded as the highest-risk group for a range of mental illnesses [4,5]
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