Is Bridge Job Activity Overstated. Kevin E Is Bridge Job Activity Overstated? Kevin E. Cahill, PhD The Center on Aging & Work at Boston College Michael D. Giandrea, PhD U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Joseph F. Quinn, PhD Boston College, Department of Economics January 4, 2015 Allied Social Sciences Association Annual Scientific Meeting San Francisco, CA This work was supported by the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing Cross-Council Programme. The LLHW Funding Partners for this award are the Economic and Social Research Council and the Medical Research Council [grant number ES/L002884/1].

Agenda Overview Background Data and Methods Key Findings Discussion and Limitations Conclusions

Overview Research Question: Is bridge job activity overstated? Motivation: Considerable prior research has shown that the majority of older Americans with career employment do not exit the labor force directly from their career job. One criticism of this research is that bridge job activity may be overstated because the definition of a bridge job in the existing literature does not require a change in occupation. For some, the “bridge job” may just be another in a series of job changes, and not a prelude to retirement. Approach: This paper investigates the extent to which bridge jobs involve a change in occupation or a switch to part-time status, both of which may signal the start of a retirement transition, as opposed to continued career employment, albeit with a different employer.

Overview Data: Work histories of full-time career individuals aged 51 to 61 in 1992 from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), based on biennial interviews through 2014. Key Findings: After leaving career employment, three quarters of men and women changed occupation and/or a switch from full-time to part- time status. The vast majority of career workers who changed jobs later in life did in fact do so as part of a retirement transition.

Retirement as a Process (not an event) Source: Cahill, Kevin E., Michael D. Giandrea, and Joseph F. Quinn. 2015. “Retirement Patterns and the Macroeconomy, 1992 – 2010: The Prevalence and Determinants of Bridge Jobs, Phased Retirement, and Re-entry among Three Recent Cohorts of Older Americans.” The Gerontologist; 55(3), 384-403; doi: 10.1093/geront/gnt146.

Bridge Job Prevalence and Type, by Gender and HRS Cohort

Data: The Health and Retirement Study A nationally-representative longitudinal dataset of older Americans that began in 1992 Ongoing with new cohorts and biennial follow-up interviews Four cohorts of interest: HRS Core (51 to 61 in 1992); War Babies (51 to 56 in 1998); Early Boomers (51 to 56 in 2004); Mid-Boomers (51 to 56 in 2010) Methodology for examining retirement transitions Define full-time career (FTC) job = 1,600+ hours/year AND 10+ years of tenure Select age-eligible respondents who were on a FTC job at the time of their first interview Examine respondents’ work histories since the first interview

Sample Derivation

Calculating Bridge Job Prevalence among those Participating in the 2014 Survey

Calculating Bridge Job Prevalence among those Not Participating in the 2014 Survey

Step 1: Remove those for whom we do not observe a transition from career employment Women

Transitions from Career Employment Change in 2-Digit Occupation First Transition, Men

Transitions from Career Employment Change in 2-Digit Occupation and Part-time Status First Transition, Men

Transitions from Career Employment Change in 2-Digit Occupation and Part-time Status Any Transition, Men

Transitions from Career Employment Change in 2-Digit Occupation First Transition, Women

Transitions from Career Employment Change in 2-Digit Occupation and Part-time status First Transition, Women

Transitions from Career Employment Change in 2-Digit Occupation and Part-time Status Any Transition, Women

What Defines an Involuntary Retirement Transition? Surveys of older workers consistently show widespread satisfaction with the non-financial aspects of work (e.g., engagement, social networks) (AARP, 2014). Retirement transitions reflect in part the flexibility of the U.S. labor market and have been shown to be largely voluntary (Maestas, 2010). On the other hand, other studies show that gradual retirement is involuntary for a sizable minority of older workers (Ebbinghaus & Radl, 2014; Flippen & Tienda, 2000; Hershey & Henkens, 2014; Hetschko, Knabe, & Schob, 2013; Seligman, 2014; Szinovacz & Davey, 2005). Involuntary can mean driven by layoffs, business closures, or family caregiving needs, but could also mean driven out of financial necessity.

Reasons for Leaving FTC Employment by Gender and Change in Bridge Job Status

Discussion Among those respondents who were on a career job at the time of the first interview and who later changed jobs: 48 percent of the men and 39 percent of the women also changed occupations, using 2-digit occupation codes. Approximately 8 out of 10 career workers either moved to a job in a different occupation or switched to part-time status following career employment. An area for future research is an improvement in interdisciplinary understanding of the retirement process. Confusion exists across disciplines when it comes to key definitions, such as phased retirement, bridge employment, and reentry. While it is probably not realistic for researchers to agree on how to treat these concepts from an empirical standpoint, it does seem reasonable for researchers across disciplines to come to an agreement on some key concepts.

Limitations The focus of this paper is on retirement patterns from career employment. An analysis of job changes among non-career workers would be worthwhile. The pathways from career employment to complete labor force withdrawal are far from uniform, and even the three-way construct of gradual retirement (phased retirement, bridge employment, reentry) masks a plethora of avenues that exist as a result of different combinations of these paths. This paper focuses on the HRS Core respondents only. The prevalence of occupational changes and part-time status might differ for the HRS War Babies (aged 51 to 56 in 1998), the Early Boomers (aged 51 to 56 in 2004), and the Mid-Boomers (aged 51 to 56 in 2010).

Conclusion Is bridge job activity overstated? Modestly. While labeling all departures from career jobs to other jobs later in life as transition stages en route to retirement results in an overstatement of the bridge job phenomenon, this research suggests that the overstatement is a modest one.