Older workers stay longer in the labor market due to increasing life expectancy and retirement age. The aging workforce is perceived to create challenges to the current labor markets including productivity, yet our understanding of how the demographic transition and aging workforce affect the labor market and firms’ productivity is limited. Using the 2007–2019 Korean Workplace Panel Survey, we examine the effect of the workforce age structure on wage per worker and labor productivity of firms. The workforce age structure is disaggregated into three age groups: young workers (16–29 years), prime-age workers (30–49 years), and older workers (50 years and higher). Wage and value-added per worker are selected as measures of labor costs and productivity. The ordinary least squares regression results suggest no statistically significant association of firms’ wage per worker and labor productivity with the share of young workers but a negative association with the share of older workers. Yet, in some regions, sectors, and firms, older workers show comparable productivity to prime-age workers while their wages are lower than that of prime-age workers. Its association is particularly apparent in the unstable and low-wage sectors, small to medium size firms, and the Capital Region (Seoul and surrounding areas including Incheon megacity and Gyeonggi province) and six other megacities. Once the difference-GMM addresses the potential endogeneity issue, we find no association between the shares of both young and older workers and firms’ wages and productivity.

由于预期寿命和退休年龄的增加，年长工人在劳动力市场上停留的时间更长。人们认为劳动力老龄化会给当前的劳动力市场带来挑战，包括生产力，但我们对人口结构转变和劳动力老龄化如何影响劳动力市场和企业生产力的理解是有限的。使用 2007-2019 年韩国工作场所面板调查，我们研究了劳动力年龄结构对每个工人的工资和公司劳动生产率的影响。劳动力年龄结构分为三个年龄组：年轻工人（16-29 岁）、壮年工人（30-49 岁）和老年工人（50 岁及以上）。选择每个工人的工资和增加值作为劳动力成本和生产率的衡量标准。普通最小二乘回归结果表明，公司的工人人均工资和劳动生产率与年轻工人的比例在统计上没有显着关联，但与年长工人的比例呈负相关。然而，在一些地区、行业和企业中，年长工人的生产率与壮年工人相当，但他们的工资却低于壮年工人。它的关联在不稳定和低工资部门、中小型企业、首都地区（首尔和周边地区，包括仁川特大城市和京畿道）和其他六个特大城市中尤为明显。一旦差异 GMM 解决了潜在的内生性问题，我们发现年轻和年长工人的份额与公司的工资和生产率之间没有关联。