Autonomy Peaks —Then Plummets: How control over work changes with age

Autonomy Peaks —Then Plummets: How control over work changes with age

Autonomy – the feeling of control over how, when and where work gets done - has become recognised as a key driver of employee satisfaction and productivity, especially in the post-COVID hybrid workplace.

But, far from rising throughout a person’s career, new evidence looking at nearly half a million workers in Australia, Germany, the UK and England shows that autonomy peaks in mid-career then steadily declines towards retirement.

In their new paper, “The growth and collapse of autonomy at workLink opens in a new window,” published this month in PNAS, the flagship peer-reviewed journal of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Professor Andrew Oswald of Warwick Economics and Associate Professor Redzo Mujcic of Warwick Business School analyse longitudinal data from more than 400,000 workers in three rich countries to trace in detail their own feelings about their job autonomy, and cross reference this with objective measures such as job titles.

They find that from the age of around 40, in all of the countries studied, job autonomy collapses as people move from middle age towards retirement – which may represent 20 to 30 years of working life.

It is the first study to identify this “hump-shaped” pattern, which remains true for both subjective data – the worker’s own feelings – and more objective measures such as whether a person holds a formal managerial or supervisory position, according to their job title.

The researchers suggest that formal and informal demotions and “sidelining” must play a greater part in the modern labour market than is usually believed.

They also highlight that the curve is not explained by people moving to a new employer in a lower-autonomy role – the data shows that the phenomenon mostly occurs within the same employer.

Professor Oswald said: “We assumed that older workers would today be the ones who ruled the roost and had high autonomy. That is not remotely what we found.”

Dr Mujcic added: “We hope that economists, psychologists, HR specialists and other social and behavioural scientists will pick up this baton and seek to uncover what is driving this international phenomenon; and to reconcile this “hump” with the “bath-tub” wellbeing evidence seen in many other studies.”

• R. Mujcic, & A.J. Oswald, The growth and collapse of autonomy at work, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (27) e2504419122, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2504419122 (2025).