Job satisfaction and retirement age intentions in Finland: Self-employed versus salary earners

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of job satisfaction on the intended retirement age of self-employed and organisationally-employed white-collar professionals. The analysis also examines potential boundary conditions imposed by other domains of life for the applicability of this relationship. Design/methodology/approach – The study employs ordered probit regressions to analyse primary survey data comprising 1,262 Finnish white-collar professionals. Findings – The econometric results suggest that job satisfaction is a significant determinant of the intention to retire later and thus prolong a career. The analysis does not find a difference in the effect of job satisfaction between salary earners and self-employed individuals. However, the analysis finds that other domains of life influence how job satisfaction affects retirement-age intentions, and that these influences differ between self-employed and salaried respondents. Practical implications – The findings imply that developing measures to improve the job satisfaction of (highly educated) older workers is an alternative to the widely debated regulatory approach of prolonging working careers by increasing the statutory retirement age. The principal limitation is the focus on white-collar professionals in a single country. Originality/value – This is the first empirical comparison of the effect of job satisfaction on the intended retirement age between salary earners and self-employed individuals. It is also the first examination of the effect of job satisfaction on retirement intentions or behaviour that accounts for the effects of other domains of life satisfaction.