Leaving the labor market: exit routes, personality traits and well-being

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

March 30, 2022

Summary:

In this paper we examine the buffering effects of personality traits when people leave their work in later life. Using large-scale panel data for the UK, we show that depending on the exit route and satisfaction related to overall life and the domains of income and leisure, different personality traits act as moderators. Besides augmenting leisure satisfaction for those who hit mandatory retirement, conscientiousness augments life satisfaction for those becoming unemployed. On the contrary, extraversion mitigates satisfaction with life, income, and leisure for those who retire early. This may be an indication that extraverted individuals who tend to be sociable and outgoing may suffer when losing social relationships from their work. At the same time, extraversion may be helpful in augmenting leisure satisfaction for those who stop working for reasons related to ill health or family care. Neuroticism augments income satisfaction for those who become unemployed, which may reflect that people high in neuroticism had a lower “baseline level” of income satisfaction relative to typical individuals so they were not affected as much. Finally, agreeableness mitigates life and leisure satisfaction for those hitting mandatory retirement, as is also the case with openness in terms of income satisfaction.

Published in

PLoS ONE

Volume

Volume: 17

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263670

ISSN

19326203

Subjects

Notes

Open Access

© 2022 Kesavayuth et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Covered by over 40 media outlets


Related Publications

#547216

News

Latest findings, new research

Publications search

Search all research by subject and author

Podcasts

Researchers discuss their findings and what they mean for society

Projects

Background and context, methods and data, aims and outputs

Events

Conferences, seminars and workshops

Survey methodology

Specialist research, practice and study

Taking the long view

ISER's annual report

Themes

Key research themes and areas of interest