Labour Productivity and Workforce Age in Austrian ICT Manufacturing and Service Sectors

The relation between firms' productivity level and the age composition of the employees is assessed using a unique dataset from Austria. The Austrian industry is decomposed into groups belonging to different ICT categories in order to test whether age structure effects differ between ICT related industries and other sectors. We control for firm-specific characteristics (e.g. number of employees, firm type, size, etc.) as well as the composition of employee's characteristics (including age, length and type of education, gender and occupational structure). The results are as follows: (a) No age pattern on productivity was found for the ICT producing and using industries. (b) Other industries show a hump-shaped age profile