Given Italy's progressively aging population, one of the oldest in Europe, there is growing concern about how to ensure long-term career sustainability across sectors. This issue is particularly pressing in the education system, where Italian teachers represent one of the oldest professional groups worldwide. Combined with risks of burnout, limited career progression, and increasing digitalization, this demographic trend underscores the need to better understand which organizational practices can support and sustain teachers' careers in later working life.


Drawing on a sample of 800 Italian teachers aged 50 and above (M = 56.9 years; 83.6% women), we used latent profile analysis to examine patterns of perceived organizational support. The analysis included four dimensions from the Later Life Workplace Index - organizational climate, leadership, work design, and individual development - as well as individual career resources measured through Career Adapt-abilities.


We identified four distinct profiles that related differentially to three career sustainability indicators: work engagement (as a proxy for the "happiness" dimension of sustainable careers), perceived health ("health" indicator), and self-rated job performance ("productivity" indicator). Age and gender were included as control variables and examined as predictors of both profile membership and career sustainability outcomes.


Our results indicate that organizational practices strongly impact teachers' engagement and perceived health, whereas they do not appear to significantly affect self-rated job performance. These findings contribute to the literature on sustainable career development for older workers and provide practical implications on how schools can support the career development of older teachers in the later stages of their professional lives.