The average effective age of labour market exit was 64.7 years for men and 63.6 years for women across OECD countries in 2024. There has been a steady increase in the average effective age of labour market exit from the trough reached in the early‑2000s, by 2.7 years for men on average across OECD countries and 3.9 years for women.
Pensions at a Glance 2025
OECD and G20 Indicators
The average age of labour market exit is equal to 63.6 years for women and 64.7 years for men in 2024. It is below 64 in fewer than half of OECD countries for men and in three‑fifths of them for women (Figure 6.13). Average exit ages are at 61 years or below for men in Luxembourg, Slovenia and Türkiye and at about 60.5 years or below for women in Belgium, Costa Rica, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Türkiye. By contrast, men in Chile, Colombia, Iceland, Israel, Korea, Mexico and the United States withdrew from the labour market after age 67 on average. Women withdrew after age 65 in Chile, Estonia, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Sweden and the United States. In all but eight OECD countries, men exit the labour market after women, with the largest differences observed in Colombia (6.3 years) and Costa Rica (5.0 years). By contrast women in Korea leave the labour market 2.2 years later than men with the gap in the other countries being half a year or below.
The average effective age of labour market exit is correlated with the normal retirement age, with a linear correlation coefficient of about 0.46 for both men and women. Countries such as Luxembourg, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia have both low labour market exit age and normal retirement age, while Iceland has high levels for both. However, the correlation is distorted due to countries such as Colombia, Costa Rica and Korea that have low normal retirement ages but high exit ages as low pensions therein imply that workers continue to work at very old ages to supplement their income. In most countries where women can retire earlier than men (Austria, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Switzerland and Türkiye), women’s average age of labour market exit is also low.
After several decades of a sharp downward trend, the average effective exit age reached its lowest level around the year 2000 for both men and women on average across countries (Figure 6.14). In 2000, the average effective exit age was 62.0 years for men and 59.7 years for women, against 66.3 and 64.9 years, respectively, in 1970. Since 2000, the effective age increased by four years or more for men in Australia, Canada, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia and Türkiye and by over five years for women in Australia, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia. Over the same time period there was actually some significant decline in the effective exit age for men in Colombia (‑2.2 years) and Mexico (‑2.3 years) and for women in Costa Rica (‑4.2 years), Iceland (‑1.7 years), Norway (‑2.0 years) and Türkiye (‑6.1 years) as well as to a lower extent in Greece (‑0.7 years) and Spain (‑0.5 years).
Definition and measurement
The average effective age of labour market exit is defined as the average age of exit from the labour force for workers aged 40 and over. In order to abstract from compositional effects in the age structure of the population, labour force withdrawals are estimated using changes in labour force participation rates rather than labour force levels. These changes are calculated for each (synthetic) cohort divided into five‑year age groups. Each age group is weighted by its average population share among OECD countries. Based on this methodology, absolute numbers for a given country should be interpreted cautiously. However, comparisons across countries or through time within countries are robust (www.oecd.org/els/soc/Labour-Market-Exit-Age-Methodology.pdf).
The normal retirement age is defined as the age of eligibility to all mandatory components of the pension system in 2024, assuming labour market entry at age 22 and an uninterrupted career. This age corresponds to Table 3.5 in Chapter 3.
Further reading
Boulhol, H. and M. Keese (2021), A method for calculating the average age of labour market exit, OECD, www.oecd.org/els/soc/Labour-Market-Exit-Age-Methodology.pdf.
OECD (2017), OECD Employment Outlook 2017, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/empl_outlook-2017-en.
OECD (n.d.), “Ageing and Employment Policies”, Working Better with Age reports on Denmark, France, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Switzerland and the United States, https://doi.org/10.1787/19901011.
Note: Effective labour market exit age is shown for 2024. Normal retirement age is shown for individuals retiring in 2024 after a full career from labour market entry at age 22.
Source: OECD estimates based on the results of national labour force surveys and the European Union Labour Force Survey. Normal retirement age: See Chapter 3.
Source: OECD estimates based on the results of national labour force surveys, the European Union Labour Force Survey and, for earlier years in some countries, national censuses, www.oecd.org/els/emp/average-effective-age-of-retirement.htm