Meaning of Work and Post-Retirement Employment Survival: Evidence From a Time-to-Event Analysis in Java, Indonesia

Amid rising laborforce participation among older adults, understanding retirees’ motivations to continue working is increasingly crucial. This study investigates how the meaning of work relates to post-retirement employment survival among older adults. We conducted structured interviews with 230 retirees aged 53 and older in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Through these interviews, we evaluated five dimensions of work meaning: financial, personal, social, generativity, and spiritual. Respondents included former employees from government, military, health, education, state-owned, and private institutions. We employed Gompertz survival analysis with robustness checks via Cox regression and inverse probability weighting. The result revealed that by the seventh year of retirement, the probability of remaining employed reached 0.75. A strong social meaning of work was associated with prolonged employment, whereas a strong spiritual meaning was associated with earlier labormarket exit. These findings suggest the need for flexible retirement age policies and support for community-based spiritual engagement to accommodate diverse retirement trajectories.