This paper extends the job creation–job destruction approach to the labor market to take into account a deterministic finite horizon. As hirings and separations depend on the time over which investment costs can be recouped, the life-cycle setting implies age-differentiated labor-market flows. While search by the unemployed falls with age, the separation rate is rather U-shaped over the life cycle. Worker heterogeneity in the context of undirected search implies an intergenerational externality, which is not eliminated by the Hosios condition. We show that age-specific policies are required to attain the first-best allocation.