Abstract

Today’s workforce is contending with two overlapping and ongoing sources of strain: broad economic instability and the fast-moving, unevenly distributed spread of artificial intelligence into everyday job tasks. This systematic review synthesizes recent empirical work (2021–2026) on psychological resilience as a protective factor against the mental-health costs of these dual stressors, together with evidence on whether resilience-building interventions actually deliver results. Following a structured, PRISMA-guided search across academic databases and publisher platforms, 13 studies meeting predetermined eligibility standards were identified, spanning national surveys, qualitative and mixed-methods research, structural equation models, and two intervention-focused meta-analyses. Three key patterns emerged from the synthesis. Both economic instability and AI-related job displacement generate measurable psychological harm, including anxiety, erosion of professional identity, and a newly proposed clinical symptom cluster termed AI Replacement Dysfunction. Differences among individuals in self-efficacy, cognitive reappraisal, and social capital consistently correspond to lower distress, a pattern in line with resource-based models of resilience. Structured resilience-building programs, particularly digital and psychosocial interventions, produce modest but statistically dependable gains in resilience, engagement, and reduced mental distress. The review concludes that resilience operates less like a fixed personality trait and more like a resource that organizations and mental-health systems can deliberately cultivate, while highlighting specific gaps — above all, the near-total absence of longitudinal research and AI-specific intervention trials — that future studies still need to fill.