Work, ageing, and retirement: what do we know and where do we go from here?

Abstract

This collection is focused on understanding what we know and what we need to know on the topic of work, ageing and retirement. Work, Employment and Society has published 44 articles on this topic over 35 years, from 1989 to 2024. We analyse this article corpus and identify four themes that shed insight into what sociologists of work and ageing know: the macrostructural perspective, the organisational perspective, individual life courses, and retirement as process. Overall, we find a historical pattern whereby studies have shifted from a top-down structural approach utilising mostly quantitative survey data to an individualised and agentic approach utilising mostly qualitative data. Recent scholarship has begun to blend both structure and agency, introducing theoretical and methodological sophistication to derive more holistic understanding of ageing at work. We select 11 articles using various perspectives, theories, and methods that illustrate these trends. We conclude with suggested key directions for future research.