Career Development of Middle-aged during the Gradual Retirement

This study focused on the period of reemployment and job security after retirement of the primary job in order to in-depth life the dynamics of the gradual retirement process for middle-aged people. The study analyzed the period of reemployment after retirement and the employment and wage stability of reemployment jobs for adults aged 50 to 64 living in Seoul, which can be seen as sharing somewhat diverse conditions in income and employment. As a result of the analysis, first, factors that affect the duration of reemployment were job satisfaction before retirement, age of main job retirement, and career relevance. Second, the factors that affect the type of employment for reemployment jobs were significant, including career relevance, child status, health satisfaction before retirement, wage satisfaction, and how to prepare for retirement. Third, after analyzing the wage stability of reemployment jobs based on 80% of the main job wage income, the gap between the two groups showed heterogeneous characteristics in terms of wage income, satisfaction, and career relevance. Some of the groups whose wage income is more than 80 percent of their main jobs are found to maintain high-income jobs that make use of career connections. Based on the analysis results, it proposed implications in terms of diversifying programs based on the characteristics and demand of middle-aged people, preparing for pre-emptive reemployment using personal connections, and utilizing career and expertise.

As the baby boomers are entered into the middle-aged, the portion of demographic structure of middle-aged has been gradually increasing. After retiring their main jobs, they hope to continue their activities with various motivations such as economic purposes, social contribution, pursuit of a sense of belonging and so on. However, there has been little effort to analyze and view the characteristics of the middle-aged adults’ career transition from an integrated perspective. Therefore, in this study, topic modeling and semantic network analysis were applied to examine the latent topic variable on the middle-aged career transition and the relationships between key words in each topic. The results are as follows: 7 topics were derived with a variety of issues (skill development, retirement, health, welfare, family) along with a review of specific middle-aged targets (middle-aged men, 50+ women, the self-employed). Particularly, in the early 2000s, the health and income of middle-aged men were mainly discussed, whereas the economic issue (insurance/pension), welfare (family and social support), and career development (preparation for reemployment) were actively researched in the 2010s. Especially, the proportion of research topic of women’s career development increased during the period. As a result of the semantic network analysis, career transition is comprehensively linked to various issues of developmental tasks as well as vocational skill development. Positive words (satisfaction) and negative words (anxiety, a crisis) appeared over various issues, which reflects complex psychological states of middle-aged adults. Based on this, the policy and practical implications for the career transition of the middle-aged were suggested.

In the late 1990s, after the financial crisis, the youth experienced an economic crisis, which shows various characteristics as they progress their careers. Focusing on the family background effect in terms of intergenerational mobility, this study tried to analyze whether their occupational career types differ according to their family background characteristics and their labor market outcomes throughout their life cycle.

Using data from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study throughout 20 years, multi-channel(using criteria of occupational types and labor status) sequence analysis with the optimal matching method was applied to cluster groups of occupation mobility. Occupation mobility groups were identified as "clericals type", "management and professionals type", ‘quasi-professional and technicians type’, ‘agriculture, craft, and elementary occupation type", "mixed occupation type". Especially, ‘mixed occupation type’ was divided into two subcategories as "Delayed entry type" and "Self-employment entry type" as follows. Overall, each type of respondents experienced a duration of non-economically production or duration of education & training. Although family background effect was not significant according to occupational career type, respondents’ occupational characteristics were partly similar to their fathers’ occupation. Applying age-earning profile formula, the results showed wages increased by 2% for "clericals type", "management and professionals type", ‘quasi-professional and technicians type’, ‘agriculture, craft, and elementary occupation type", compared to mixed occupation type. Those who answered their household economic situation was high at the age of 14 showed 4% higher of their income than those who did not. On this basis, conclusions and limitations were presented.

The importance of middle-aged people is gradually highlighted by the extension of average life expectancy, the increase in the proportion of middle-aged people, and the increase in highly educated retirees. In response, the study aimed to propose policy and practical implications related to employment of middle-aged people by typifying the life-career paths of middle-aged people from the time of employment to the retirement process.

The study targets 1,010 middle-aged people aged 45 to 70 who retired from their main jobs in Seoul. First, based on their work type and employment type, five career paths were derived as a result of analyzing types using multi-channel array analysis, optimal matching method, and cluster analysis. According to the sequence and status distribution of workplace types and employment types, it was divided into small and medium-sized enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises, large enterprises, self-employed, and mixed jobs. Each type showed changes in career patterns after retirement. Second, as a result of analyzing the determinants using group difference analysis and polynomial logistic analysis, the types that continued steadily in small and medium-sized enterprises or large companies had high job security and tend to find jobs within a short period of time after retirement. On the other hand, those who moved to self-employment belatedly or mixed jobs had a lot of experience in changing jobs before retirement and did not have high labor market stability. The group that maintains self-employed or private businesses from the beginning has the longest tenure and has a high demand for post-retirement activities.

By aggregating these results, it was suggested that customized support is needed for the design of programs considering gender and age groups in the post-retirement transition phase, and for the transition to self-employed and temporary jobs after retirement.