["Economic Record, EarlyView. ", "\nWe investigate the impact of the early release of Australian pension savings during the COVID‐19 pandemic on short‐ and medium‐term labour supply behaviour. Given the endogenous nature of this policy, we also apply an instrumental variable strategy to isolate the causal effect of the policy on employment and weekly hours worked. Our findings show the pension release scheme led to a sizeable and negative extensive margin response to labour supply in 2020, before dissipating in 2021. This points to the reduction in labour supply caused by the policy being a brief shock rather than a persistent effect. We find evidence that the effect was primarily concentrated among female withdrawers and those who withdrew the full amount allowable under the policy. Our findings improve our understanding of the labour market impacts of early pension release schemes in a crisis context, and can also inform the design of pension systems more broadly.\n"]