Arduousness of work, career, and disability pensioning of Finnish iron ore miners.

The career and work arduousness of a population of retired iron ore miners and their contemporaries who continued to work were investigated to find out what aspects of work history were associated with disability pensioning. The retired group had entered the mining industry at a more advanced age than the referents. The retired miners had also started at more strenuous tasks. Later they changed to lighter tasks, but were less often promoted in their career. The risk of early retirement seems thus to be related to the essential indicators of one's progress in the mining vocation.