Chinese megacity outlines planning for older population to provide economic impetus during demographic crisis
Faced with an ever-deepening demographic crisis, Chinese cities are seeking to transform their aging populations into a “demographic dividend” to alleviate social security burdens and address structural urban labor shortages.
During the annual parliamentary meetings in March, Liu Dechun, director of the Social Development Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, voiced support for senior citizens who want to stay active.
He advocated the modernization of public facilities to make them more accessible to the elderly, the expansion of diverse job opportunities adapted to this age group, and the optimization of age limits for employment and Social Security. He also encouraged the deepening of the “Third Age Action” initiative to create better conditions for the social participation of elderly people.
Since March, places such as Shanghai and Henan province have implemented a series of policy measures aimed at optimizing employment support for seniors and safeguarding the rights of workers above the permitted age.
SHANGHAI BOOSTS PROFESSIONAL REINSERTION OF ELDERLY PEOPLE
Shanghai was the first Chinese megacity to enter a phase of marked population aging. By the end of 2025, the city’s registered population aged 60 and over reached 5.8 million, bringing its aging rate to 38%.
The city’s seniors consistently rank among the highest in the country in terms of life expectancy and healthy life expectancy. According to a 2024 study by Li Qiang, a professor at Fudan University’s Institute of Aging, the remaining life expectancy of a 60-year-old man in Shanghai rose to 24.7 years in 2020 from 21.4 years in 1990, while healthy life expectancy grew to 21.6 years from 18.6 years.
The study noted that Shanghai has a high proportion of citizens “young elderly” with solid educational background and good health. However, the labor force participation rate among Shanghai’s elderly remains low.
From 1990 to 2020, the number of elderly people employed in the city fell from 296,000 to 197,000, and their share of the elderly population decreased from 5.5% to 3.5%, reflecting the lack of diversity in their socioeconomic participation.
In demographic analyses, participation in the labor market is higher among rural elderly people than among urban elderly people. The study found that 21.4% of the rural population aged 60 to 64 remain employed, compared to 11.9% in cities.
For the same age group in the city, the labor market participation rate is just 5.3%. This low participation rate among younger urban seniors indicates untapped potential.
Recently, the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau and 27 other government departments jointly launched an implementation plan to build a system to support the social participation of the elderly, aiming to “action in old age”. The plan includes optimizing employment support and developing the potential of elderly human resources.
To eliminate information barriers in the labor market, the plan proposes leveraging public employment service platforms at all levels to provide information and employment services to seniors willing to work, along with skills enhancement services for those in need.
Age discrimination remains widespread in today’s job market. Transforming the elderly population into a “silver force” requires expanding suitable employment options and reversing social prejudices.
The implementation plan encourages relevant departments to mobilize enterprises and social organizations to proactively create diversified and adapted jobs for the elderly. It also encourages companies that develop products and services for elderly care to hire elderly people as project evaluators.
Employers are supported in rehiring retired technical professionals in accordance with relevant regulations, and retired teachers, doctors and scientists are encouraged to continue contributing their expertise.
For a long time, the inability to participate in workers’ compensation insurance due to age limits has been the biggest obstacle to senior employment. If injured on the job, older workers often face a lack of resources to obtain compensation as they cannot establish a formal employment relationship.
The new plan explicitly seeks to explore the inclusion of older workers in occupational accident insurance coverage and improve the social security mechanism for older adults working in flexible jobs and new formats of the flexible economy.
Mao Yufei, associate professor at the School of Labor Economics at Capital University of Economics and Business, said the original intention behind policies like Shanghai’s is not merely to ease pressure on the pension system.
Instead, the central logic is to move from “passive aging” for the “active aging” and proactively leverage the “silver dividend”. The implementation of this policy represents a major conceptual update in Shanghai’s approach to its aging population.
THE 2 MAIN TYPES OF JOBS FOR SENIOR AGE
Nationally, the persistence of older adults in the job market is no longer an exception and is about to become a widespread phenomenon. By the end of 2025, the Chinese population aged 60 and over will surpass 320 million, with the number of workers over that age increasing to between 87 million and 120 million.
Data from recruitment platform 51job shows that the number of active job seekers among retirees – defined as men aged 60 and over and women aged 55 and over – has grown at an average annual rate of 15% over the past 3 years.
Wang Jian, senior labor market consultant at 51job, told Caixin that this demonstrates a growing desire for professional reintegration among the “silver generation”. Simultaneously, in certain sectors and functions, companies began to explicitly advertise vacancies for “rehiring retirees” or “preference for retirees”reflecting the proactive absorption of elderly human resources by the market.
Wang noted that, analyzing both supply and demand, the roles with the highest concentration of vacancies and applications overlap significantly and can be divided into two main categories. The 1st is technical experts and management consultants.
These roles aim to rehire talent who have developed deep knowledge and strong professional connections in their respective fields, with companies valuing their industry experience, networks and mentoring skills. Typical examples include senior management consultants, independent directors, financial or legal experts, medical professionals, and retired teachers.
The 2nd category comprises basic services and administrative support. These roles take advantage of retirees’ stability, rigor, strong sense of responsibility, and low communication costs to fill workforce gaps in entry-level positions.
Typical examples include community or estate coordinators, administrative staff, librarians, student residence managers, as well as janitors, cleaners and rehabilitation nurses.
In addition to traditional paths, it is increasingly common for retirees to start businesses or explore new types of professions online. Li Lianru, 66, has been retired for more than a decade, but accidentally entered the senior exchange industry last year. Today, recording promotional videos and hosting live broadcasts for senior exchange programs has become an important part of his life.
Mao highlighted that for many younger urban elderly people, the motivation to participate has shifted from “survival” for the “development”. They no longer care about basic needs and their main goal in working after retirement is not financial compensation, but rather the spiritual need for self-fulfillment, social interaction and maintaining health.
“Moderate work, which is necessary for society, can effectively alleviate psychological emptiness and social isolation after retirement, helping the elderly maintain social ties and delay cognitive decline.”said Mao.
The national government is also encouraging the silver generation to continue applying their experience. On September 30, 2025, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued a statement on the implementation of the 2025 “Lecture Plan for the Elderly”. The directive aims to recruit 7,000 retired teachers into the compulsory education system, bringing experienced educators back to the frontline of teaching.
Mao believes that the main advantage of seniors in the job market is not their physical strength or speed, but rather their accumulated experience, stability and reliability. These attributes are indispensable resources for proactively managing the aging population and driving high-quality development under China’s new demographic normal.
However, faced with highly competitive markets and rapidly evolving job demands, many seniors who wish to return to the job market often encounter major barriers, restricted job search channels, inadequate competitiveness, and incompatibility with market needs. As a result, their job prospects are often restricted to service sectors such as food, cleaning, security and nursing.
In this context, taking advantage of education and training programs for older adults to improve professional skills has become a crucial lever for optimizing the older workforce.
Some regions are already exploring ways to include older workers in job skills training subsidies. For example, Anhui Province explicitly expanded the scope of its training subsidy to cover key groups aged 16 to 65 who are unemployed or in flexible employment and do not receive monthly retirement benefits.
This was originally published in English by Caixin Global on March 27, 2026. It was translated and republished by Poder360 under mutual content sharing agreement.
