The Longevity Bottleneck: The Boomers Are Not Retiring, And Gen Z Is Running Out Of Patience

In Japan, they have a word for him. ‘Hatarakanai ojisan’ translates as “non-working older man” and refers to the corporate phenomenon of a senior employee who has been at the company long enough to be effectively unmovable, costs considerably more than his output justifies, and spends a meaningful portion of his working day doing something that is not quite work. Data from Japanese government surveys suggests that approximately 49% of Japanese companies have at least one on staff.

Although the Japanese gave it a name, the phenomenon is much less Japanese than it appears.  He is in London. He is in Chicago. He is in Johannesburg. He is the reason the promotion that was supposed to happen in 2021 has not happened yet, and the reason the person who was supposed to get it has started updating their LinkedIn in the bathroom on their lunch break. The office has not changed to accommodate an extra decade of working life. It has simply absorbed it, awkwardly, at everyone else’s expense.

The people absorbing it most directly are the ones trying to get in through the door that the hatarakanai ojisan is blocking from the inside. Gen Z is entering a labor market where the Boomers have not left and where the career ladder that previous generations climbed has developed an immovable obstruction somewhere around the third rung.

People are living longer, which should be good news, but experts say a whole generation is now paying the price for that oversight. This is the longevity bottleneck, and it is about to get considerably worse before anyone in a position of authority admits it is happening. For once, we feel sorry for Gen Z, and we try to see who is to blame, because surely then we can figure out how to fix it?