It is well known that unemployment leaves scars after re-employment, but does this scarring effect persist even after retirement? We analyse European data on retirees from the SHARE panel, and show that the wellbeing of the retired continues to reflect the unemployment that they experienced over their working life. These scarring effects are somewhat smaller for older retirees, but larger for those who arguably had higher expectations regarding the labour market when they were active. The lower wellbeing from lifetime unemployment does not reflect lower retirement income. This long-run scarring for those who have left the labour market underlines that contemporaneous correlations significantly underestimate the wellbeing cost of unemployment.

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18 August 2025

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Economica 92(368) , pp.1083-1100, 2025

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DOI: 10.1111/ecca.70007

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecca.70007

This publication comes under the following theme: Causes and effects of wellbeing