Elderly people key to Japan’s workforce

TOKYO — The number of elderly people — aged 65 years or older — who held a job in 2017 reached a record high of 8.07 million, according to statistics compiled by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry.

As the nation’s labor shortage has become increasingly serious with the working-age population aged 15 to 64 falling below 60 percent of the entire population, the value of elderly people at work has increased.

Setting the goal of “an era of a 100-year lifespan,” the government plans to expedite efforts to improve the employment environment for the elderly. The key phrase is “70 years old.”

The government will begin full-fledged discussions as early as this autumn on a plan to raise a corporate employee’s mandatory retirement age from 65 to 70.

During his Liberal Democratic Party’s presidential campaign, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expressed his intention to have people choose an age to start receiving their pension benefits from “over 70 years old.”

Some companies are keeping ahead of the move by hiring workers aged up to 70.

In April last year, Taiyo Life Insurance Co., based in Tokyo, extended its mandatory retirement age from the current 60 to 65 and made it possible for employees to work as contract workers at their request until they turn 70.

Yoshikatsu Yamaguchi, who became the first person to benefit from this new system at the life insurer, was promoted to a section chief in charge of information technology development promotion, a higher position than what he had assumed until his retirement age, and continues to instruct younger people.