Large-scale exit from the labour market began in the 1970s in many OECD countries. The literature indicates that individual early retirement decisions are facilitated by generous and accessible ‘pathways’ into retirement in the public pension system, unemployment insurance or disability benefits. It is unclear, however, why early exit became so much more prevalent in some countries than in others and why such differences remain, despite a recent shift back towards higher employment rates and ‘active ageing’. We test a logic of sectoral cost-shifting politics involving cross-class alliances in the tradable sector, against a more traditional class-based logic of welfare state policy-making. Quantitative analysis of employment outcomes in 21 countries shows that the political economy of early exit clearly rests on the sectoral politics of cost-shifting.