Across the globe, economic fluctuations have taken their toll on both organizations and employees, particularly during sustained recessions. Surprisingly, little research, however, has directly investigated the effects of recessions on employees. As such, the goal of the current study was to investigate the effects of specific recession-related stressors on employee outcomes (strain and satisfaction). We investigated an archival data set of 7666 individuals collected as part of the Workplace Employment Relations Study for relations among recession-related stressors with strain and job satisfaction variables. We found that recession-related stressors were significantly related to both strain and satisfaction. More specifically, certain recession-related stressors (e.g. increased workload and reorganization of work) were more strongly related to strain and satisfaction than others. These results imply the need for greater attention to stress management strategies aimed at helping both employees and their organizations cope with the human costs of economic recessions. Copyright (C) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.