Furthermore, if a happy person does happen to be unemployed, he or she is likely to find a new job more quickly than an unhappy unemployed person (Marks & Fleming, 1999). Notably, in a 15-year study that followed 24,000 German citizens, those people who had lost their jobs reported low life satisfaction prior to their unemployment (Lucas, Clark, Georgellis, & Diener, 2004). Thus, positive affect and related constructs seem to offer one measure of protection against a particularly strong and negative indicator of career success— namely, unemployment.