Do Firms Hire More Older Workers? Evidence from Germany

Fabian Busch, Robert Fenge and Carsten Ochsen

No 9219, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper analyses how demographic changes of the labour force affect labour demand. Do firms adjust their hiring behaviour to an ageing society? Combining data at the firm level and the administrative district level, we analyse the hiring behaviour of firms. Our findings suggest that firms with an ageing workforce hire relatively more older workers. Since the willingness to hire older workers also increases with the share of older unemployed, the propensity to employ older people does generally rise with an ageing labour force. Also, part-time employment induces firms to engage more older workers but this effect disappears for large firms. In contrast, partial retirement regulations have a negative effect on hiring older workers which reveals unintended incentives of the German law on this matter. Finally, firms with a higher share of educated personnel demand more older workers.

Keywords: ageing labour force; hiring of older workers; panel data models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 J11 J23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-eur, nep-hrm, nep-isf and nep-lma
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9219

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