In aging Japan, 75-year-old job hunters may be the new normal

Bloomberg

At the age of 75, Mikiko Kuzuno found herself recently laid off and applying for a job at a factory near Tokyo. She insisted on making the application in person.
“I asked them to please take a look at me,” she said. “I wanted to show them how healthy I am. Some people are very frail.”
Kuzuno, 78, is now three years into work at the small plant in Warabi, where she helps launder and package steamed hand-towels given to customers at restaurants. It’s demanding work where she stands throughout her three-hour shift, but she doesn’t think of retiring — partly for financial reasons, and partly because she hates hanging around at home.
This could be Japan’s new normal, with people working into their 70s and beyond, adding a new facet to its reputation as a nation of workaholics. PM Shinzo Abe is seeking to keep people like Kuzuno employed longer so they can pitch into the tax base and ease the burden on government spending, as the country copes with having the world’s fastest aging population.
Japan’s graying population has propelled a surge in social security spending, accounting for about one-third of government outlays in the fiscal year that ended in March, much of which was funded by debt. Thus, Abe is advancing legislation to encourage companies to abolish retirement ages and take other measures to keep people on the job past age 70. A second bill would make such policies mandatory.
The government’s also mulling a new option of allowing workers to delay receiving their pension payouts to age 75.
A higher proportion of Japan’s population is aged 65 or older than in any country in the world, and its life expectancy at birth of 84 is tied with Switzerland for first place, according to World Bank data.
With a declining birthrate, Japan’s population is set to slump by almost a third by 2060, by which time about 40 percent will be 65 or over, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.