One Japanese company in three will let you work until you turn 70.
Under the Act on Stabilization of Employment of Elderly Persons, holding a job open to age 65 is a hard legal obligation, and 99.99% of firms comply. Extending that to 70 is only a “duty to endeavor,” with no penalty attached. In June 2026 the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare reported that 34.8% of companies had actually put such a measure in place, up 2.9 points on the year. Two out of three had not.
Older workers are not waiting for them.
The Cabinet Office’s 2026 White Paper on the Aging Society counts 9.6 million people aged 65 and over inside a labor force of 70.04 million. The number of workers past 65 has gone up for 22 consecutive years. Among people 65 to 69, 54.5% are working. Among those 70 to 74, it is 36.2%. Past 75, one in eight still holds a job.
What one more year on the job looked like
The largest study on this question comes out of France. Researchers linked pension records to medical records for 429,803 self-employed workers and looked at when each person retired. For every additional year of age at retirement, the hazard ratio for dementia was 0.968, roughly 3.2% lower per year (Dufouil C, et al. European Journal of Epidemiology. 2014;29(5):353-361). Stack five of those years together and you get a gap of about 15% between someone who stopped at 65 and someone who stopped at 70.
Japan has something close to it. A cohort of 13,984 older residents of Aichi Prefecture, none of them certified as needing long-term care at baseline, was followed for roughly nine and a half years through long-term care insurance records. Five things each showed an independent link to a lower rate of dementia: being married, exchanging support with family, seeing friends, taking part in community groups, and doing paid work. People who had all five were 46% less likely to develop dementia than people who had none (Saito M, et al. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. 2018;72(1):7-12).
What stands out is the company that paid work keeps in that list. A job is a way to earn money and also a reason to see people, a thing that sets the hour you get up, and a chair with your name on it. The researchers counted it as a social relationship, right alongside friends and neighbors.
The arrow could point either way
Here I want to be careful.
Did working protect these people from dementia, or were they healthy enough to keep working in the first place? Both studies are observational, and neither can separate the two cleanly. The ordinary fact that healthier people stay on the payroll longer will inflate any number you get.
A scoping review that gathered the research on retirement timing and cognition found five studies where later retirement lowered dementia risk and five more with a jumble of positive, negative, and null results. The literature has not settled (Yauk J, Veal B, Dobbs D. Journal of Applied Gerontology. 2024. doi:10.1177/07334648231213745).
So I cannot tell you that work prevents dementia. What holds up is narrower: people who keep working do better on cognitive measures as a group, and the gap widens the later they stop. That is a direction, not a mechanism.
The other side of the ledger
Having laid out the upside, I owe you the cost.
Japan’s confirmed workplace injury figures for 2025, released by the labour ministry in May 2026, count 135,333 workers hurt badly enough to miss four days or more. Deaths came to 700, the lowest since records began. But workers aged 60 and over accounted for 42,318 of the injuries, 31.3% of the total, the highest share ever recorded. Falls on the level were the leading type of accident, and they went up.
More older workers means more accidents in raw numbers. That part is arithmetic. The rate is the part worth looking at. The ministry’s Age-Friendly Guideline puts the annual injury rate per 1,000 workers for those 60 and over at roughly twice the rate for men in their thirties, and roughly four times for women. Same floor, same task, different odds of going down and different odds of getting back up.
On April 1, 2026, Article 62-2 of the Industrial Safety and Health Act took effect. Employers must now endeavor to adapt the workplace and the work itself to older employees, and a companion set of guidelines spells out what that means: safety management structure, physical layout, checking fitness and adjusting duties accordingly, and training.
There is no penalty for ignoring it. Which is exactly why the person doing the work should know what it says. Step heights, lighting levels, how much weight, whether there are night shifts. Every item in those guidelines is something you are entitled to raise with your employer.
Not a choice between staying and quitting
What follows is my own view. I suspect the research is picking up something other than employment itself. A reason to leave the house at a set hour. A post where somebody is counting on you. Work you plan, carry out, and see the result of. When Saito’s team filed paid work next to friendship and neighborhood ties, I think they were filing it correctly.
If that is right, full-time is not the only passing grade. Cut back to two days. Move from a job done standing to one done sitting. Take the seat where you teach instead of the one where you lift. There are plenty of ways to keep the substance and change the shape. And that 34.8% figure covers more ground than it sounds like: the law’s menu includes contract work and community-benefit roles, not just staying on the payroll. Continuing without staying at the company is already written into the statute.
If you have a chronic condition or take regular medication, talk to your doctor before you change your hours or your workload. Whether night shifts or heavy lifting are still reasonable depends on your blood pressure, your bones, and what is in your pill organizer.
Nine point six million people. That number describes a country putting its old people to work, and it describes a country whose old people have decided to keep working. Which reading you take changes what you do next.
I write more about roles, purpose, and health in Walking to 110: Wisdom from the World’s Longest-Lived Nation. Available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback.
References
- Dufouil C, Pereira E, Chêne G, et al. Older age at retirement is associated with decreased risk of dementia. European Journal of Epidemiology. 2014;29(5):353-361.
- Saito M, Aida J, Kondo K, et al. Influence of social relationship domains and their combinations on incident dementia: a prospective cohort study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. 2018;72(1):7-12.
- Yauk J, Veal B, Dobbs D. Understanding the Link Between Retirement Timing and Cognition: A Scoping Review. Journal of Applied Gerontology. 2024. doi:10.1177/07334648231213745.
- Cabinet Office of Japan. Annual Report on the Ageing Society 2026 (June 2026).
- Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Report on the Employment Situation of Elderly Persons, 2025 (June 2026).
- Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Occupational Accident Statistics 2025, confirmed figures (May 2026).
- Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Age-Friendly Guideline: Guidelines for Ensuring the Safety and Health of Older Workers.
- Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Guidelines for Preventing Occupational Accidents Among Older Workers (Industrial Safety and Health Act, Article 62-2; effective April 1, 2026).