Part-time Employment Opportunities and Labour Supply of Older Workers

I investigate the links between part-time employment opportunities and older workers’ labour supply adjustments, focusing on the extensive and intensive margins. Utilising data from 30 European countries from 2011 to 2021, I construct a quasi-panel that compares individuals aged 60-64 with those aged 55-59 from five years prior. I find that the employees in sectors offering more part-time jobs are more likely to stay employed and that the total hours worked by these employees decrease at a slower rate than those of the employees in sectors imposing more rigid hours constraints. These results are most pronounced for women in manual occupation types but are significant across all examined worker categories. The positive relationship between part-time employment opportunities and the total hours older employees work is robust to various modifications in the empirical setup. However, this relationship is heterogeneous across countries and is least pronounced in the countries with a high availability of part-time jobs.