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Workers and their families bear much of the economic burden of COVID-19. Even though they have declined somewhat, unemployment rates are considerably higher than before the start of the pandemic. Many workers also face uncertainty about their future employment prospects and increasing financial strain. At the same time, the workplace is a common source of transmission of COVID-19 and many jobs previously seen as relatively safe are now viewed as potentially hazardous. Thus, many workers face dual threats of economic stress and COVID-19 exposure. This paper develops a model of workers' responses to these dual threats, including risk perception and resource depletion as mediating factors that influence the relationship of economic stress and occupational risk factors with COVID-19 compliance-related attitudes, safe behavior at work, and physical and mental health outcomes. The paper also describes contextual moderators of these relationships at the individual, unit, and regional level. Directions for future research are discussed., (© 2020 International Association of Applied Psychology.)

The present article examines how job demands and resources are related to indices of strain among healthcare professionals during virus pandemics. The article also presents the results of a study examining the relationships between COVID-19 demands (e.g., lack of personal protective equipment, concerns about infecting family members), resources (meaningful work, social support), and mental health strain within a sample of emergency medicine personnel over six consecutive weeks. COVID-19-related demands and hours worked were hypothesized to be positively related to mental health strain, whereas meaningful work and social support were hypothesized to be negatively related to mental health strain. Hours worked the prior week were hypothesized to exacerbate the positive relationships between COVID-19 demands and mental health strain, whereas the resources of meaningful work and social support were expected to buffer the relationships. Multilevel models controlling for mental health strain the prior week revealed that COVID-19 demands, along with hours worked, were each related to higher mental health strain during the week. Hours worked magnified the within-person relationship between personal COVID-19 demands and mental health strain. In contrast to the hypotheses, social support and meaningful work were not related to mental health strain. Discussion focuses on the implications of the findings for healthcare professionals., (© 2020 International Association of Applied Psychology.)