Working life expectancy and working years lost by occupational group: abstract

Objective Understanding differences in the length of working careers and reasons for non-employment across occupations is essential for shaping policies that promote longer working lives. This study examines differences in the expected time spent in paid employment and outside paid employment, i.e. working life expectancy (WLE) and working years lost (WYL) respectively, across occupational groups in Norway. Material and Methods We applied a period-table approach with data from one year (2015) and used the register-based Nor-Work cohort to estimate WLE between ages 30 and 60 (i.e., time in paid employment after age 30, truncated at age 60). We calculated WYL due to unemployment, disability retirement, temporary health-related absences, and other reasons. Analyses were stratified by 16 occupational groups, selected based on previous research and classified at the 4-, 3-, or 2-digit ISCO-88 (COM) level depending on group size. Occupational codes were based on the main job held in November 2014, or from the four preceding years if the individual was not employed or occupational data were unavailable in 2014. Results WLE between ages 30 and 60 was 22.4 years for the general population. Stratification by occupation showed that Production and operations managers had the highest WLE (28.1 years), while Labourers in mining, construction, manufacturing, and transport had the lowest (18.1 years), resulting in a 10-year difference in expected employment time. Among these labourers, WYL was distributed as follows: 3.5 years due to disability retirement, 2.8 years to unemployment, 1.9 years to temporary health-related absences, and 3.3 years to other reasons. Conclusion These findings highlight substantial differences in WLE and WYL across occupations. Complementary analyses are underway as part of the EPHOR project, utilising cohorts from other European countries. Cross-country comparisons may help disentangle the roles of occupational factors and country-specific social and structural factors.
Abstract from: 30th Epidemiology in Occupational Health Conference (EPICOH 2025), Hosted by Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, Utrecht University, 6–9 OCTOBER 2025, Utrecht, the Netherlands