Many people his age would be happy to slip on a cardigan and put their feet up, but not Teruo Sugiura. The 86-year-old makes his way to a seniors’ work centre in Tokyo several days a week where he repairs traditional Japanese sliding doors. It doesn’t pay much, but that hasn’t stopped Sugiura from turning up for the last 20 years -- one of millions of elderly Japanese still collecting wages into retirement age. “I’m working to keep my body in good shape,” said Sugiura, a former sweets salesman at a high-end department store.
“I think it’s wrong not to be doing anything. There’s no point staying at home twiddling my thumbs.”
Japan’s silver-haired workforce is everywhere these days -- from wrinkled men waving glow sticks at construction sites to checkout counter clerks or caregivers for the very old. And this geriatric working class shows no sign of shrinking -- more than 20 % of Japanese older than 65 still work.
That is the highest proportion among developed economies and a figure likely to soar as the pool of younger workers falls and the fast-ageing population squeezes a strained social welfare system. People over 65 are expected to account for nearly 40 percent of the greying population by 2060 as Japan wrestles with a low birth rate.
Meanwhile, the country’s labour force -- the number of employed and unemployed people aged 15 to 64 -- is at risk of losing more than 27 million workers in the same time frame, a drop of about 42 percent from current levels, according to a government advisory panel. Demand for workers is high and Japan’s unemployment rate for January was an enviable 3.2 %, a two-decade low and well below the US or many European nations.
In response to demographic shifts, the government is gradually raising the official retirement age and starting ages for state pension payments to 65. The official retirement age will be raised in steps from 61 to 65 by 2025. It will be raised to 62 next month. “This is enough incentive for (seniors) to push back their retirement and keep working,” investment bank Goldman Sachs said in a recent report on Japan’s labour market.
