The role of bridge jobs in the retirement transition: gender, race, and ethnicity.

We used the first wave of the new Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to document the importance of transitional stages--bridge jobs--between career employment and complete labor force withdrawal in the early 1990s. We describe the labor force status of a sample of about 9,500 older Americans with some work experience after age 49, and the transition patterns of those for whom we can identify a career job. We observe significant bridge job activity, including part-time work and movement between self-employment and wage-and-salary jobs. Subsequent waves of the HRS will permit researchers to follow this large sample through the labor force withdrawal process and to analyze the determinants and consequences of alternative retirement routes.