MEN’S LATE CAREERS AND CAREER EXITS IN ESTONIA

Ellu Saar, Kadri Täht

Institute for International and Social Studies, Tallinn University

Abstract. The paper will compare the labour market moves of male late career workers in Estonia in the 1980s and 1990s. The question asked here is whether and to what extent the social and economic changes affected the intensity and directions of job moves of late career workers and also their labour market exit patterns. Another question posed here is the role of both individual as well as structural factors in the process of older workers’ adjusting to the new labour market situation. We will study older male employees’ careers from a longitudinal perspective concentrating not only on labour force participation rates and early retirement, but on mobility patterns in old age. We will broaden our research on the question how Estonian institutional settings mark life courses in old age. The analysis is based mainly on data from Estonian Family and Fertility Survey and Labour Force Surveys.

Keywords: late career, exit to retirement, older workers