Workforce Aging and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Türkiye

Does workforce aging lower firm productivity? We study this question for a large emerging economy using matched employer–employee records from Türkiye linked to firm balance sheets over 2013–2023, roughly 1.75 million firm–year observations. Identifying the relationship from within-firm variation, we find that a higher share of older workers is associated with modestly lower productivity: a one-unit increase in the share of workers aged 50 and above lowers value added per worker by about 8.3 %. Much of the larger raw correlation reflects sorting of younger workforces into more productive firms, but a precise negative effect survives selection. The average conceals pronounced heterogeneity: the penalty is about 11 % in manufacturing and routine-intensive services, roughly half as large in construction and trade, and statistically absent in agriculture. Interacting the firm’s age composition with task scores confirms the mechanism: the penalty is attenuated where non-routine interpersonal content is high and amplified where routine and analytical content are high. What matters is less the age of a workforce than the work it performs. This is among the first firm-level evidence on aging and productivity for a large emerging economy.