Long periods of unemployment drain our bank accounts and weaken the economy. New research suggests extended joblessness could also dampen our personalities. And that can make it harder to find more work.

A study published this month in the Journal of Applied Psychology examined a sample of 6769 German adults - 3733 men and 3036 women - who took the same personality test twice in a four-year window. During the experiment, 251 subjects were unemployed for less than a year; 210 faced joblessness for one to four years.

"Unemployment," researchers wrote in the Journal of Applied Psychology, "has one of the strongest impacts on well-being." Credit:AFP

The authors focused on five traits: conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness, extraversion and openness. Dispositions of perpetually job-hunting people transformed considerably - and dismally - compared with their steadily working counterparts.

"Unemployment," researchers wrote, "has one of the strongest impacts on well-being ... often lasting beyond the period of unemployment and being comparable with that of becoming disabled."