Career Mobilities, Wages and End of Career

What are the specificities of senior workers regarding career transitions? Using the Base Tous Salariés, we decompose career transitions according to whether they involve a change of occupation and/or employer. In France excluding Mayotte, between 2021 and 2022, 13.1% of private-sector employees changed employer. Among them, 3.9% remained in the same occupational category (PCS), while 9.2% also changed occupational category. These transitions decline sharply with age: 85.4% of workers aged 55 to 59 remained in the same firm one year later, compared with 73.4% of those aged 30 to 35. Controlling for observable characteristics, workers aged 55 to 59 were 30% less likely than those aged 40 to 49 to change employer. The wage gains generally associated with mobility are also smaller for older workers. More than half of employees aged 55 or older who changed employer experienced a decline in hourly wages: on average, hourly wages fell by 0.6% for workers aged 55–59 and by 4.6% for those aged 60 or older. Wage losses are even larger when mobility is accompanied by a change in occupation. Our results show that the observed job transitions are less likely voluntary among senior workers up to age 59. Moreover, as workers age, occupational mobility becomes more limited: they tend either to remain in the same occupation when changing employers or to move to occupations requiring similar skills, rather than to higher-paying occupations. Finally workers over the age of 55 are more likely to start and stay working part-time: this concerns 28.4% of workers aged 55–59 and 45% of those aged 60 or older, compared with 19.1% of workers aged 30 to 54.