Europe is aging rapidly, but revisions to projections do not globally demonstrate that it is aging “faster than expected.” In 2025, the EU has approximately 2.9 people aged 15-64 for every person aged 65 or older; by 2100, the Eurostat projection corresponds to approximately 1.7 people aged 15-64 for every person aged 65 or older. All countries face the same demographic wall, but their results diverge strikingly: in 2024, the employment rate of 60-64 year-olds in Sweden is 69.5% according to the Eurostat figure cited by the Government, in France 42.4% according to the Eurostat figure cited by the Government.
The essentials
- Aging increases funding and employment stakes. The decision-making process can influence the effectiveness of extending working life.
- Since 2023, Sweden has set a minimum public pension age of 63 and a right to remain in employment until 69, with an employment rate of 60-64 year-olds of 69.5%; France has set 64 years through legislation and remains at 42.4% (Eurostat 2024).
- The Netherlands has applied since 2025 an indexation formula linked to life expectancy, adopted with union agreement.
- The challenge for 2040-2060: the viability of pay-as-you-go systems is linked to how working life is extended and its social acceptability.
Europe ages on a known timetable, but at an accelerated pace
The demographic dependency ratio, the share of those over 65 relative to 15-64 year-olds, is 34.5% in 2025 according to Eurostat. For every 100 people aged 15-64, the EU has 34.5 people aged 65 or older in 2025. The European Commission’s 2024 ageing report projects a significant increase in this ratio by 2060-2070. Financing pensions through pay-as-you-go systems rests on a balance: when working-age people become scarcer, options include raising contributions, reducing pensions, extending working careers, but also productivity, taxation, immigration, and budget transfers.
Most European governments have opted for extending working careers. Results differ between countries, and the available data do not allow them to be explained by the reform decision-making process alone. Germany has progressively raised the legal age to 67; the Netherlands has applied since 2025 an indexation formula based on life expectancy, adopted previously in the pension agreement; Sweden has no single fixed age, but applies distinct minimum ages depending on the pension and employment. These architectures are not mere administrative technicalities. They reflect opposing philosophies about what the state can impose on workers without losing their buy-in.
This debate on the weight of demographics in employment policy choices runs through all European labor market policies. Eurostat projections confirm that the constraint is real, but institutional room for maneuver remains large.
Sweden built a framework, not an age
Sweden’s pension system was completely redesigned in the 1990s through a broad parliamentary agreement, five parties, then translated into a sectoral bargaining framework. The essential point: there is no fixed legal age. Since 2023, the minimum public pension age is 63 and the right to remain in employment extends to 69. The pension received depends on accumulated contributions and life expectancy at the time of departure: leaving earlier gives less, leaving later gives more. The mechanism creates a financial signal without brute constraint.
What this architecture produces is measurable. In 2024, the rate is 69.5% according to the Eurostat series cited. Sweden ranks among the top three countries in the European Union on this indicator. And this high rate does not conceal degraded health among older workers: Swedish data from Pensionsmyndigheten (the Swedish Pensions Agency) show that the rate of recourse to long-term sick leave among 60-64 year-olds is below the European average. In other words, Swedish workers extend their activity because conditions permit it, not because they are forced to despite failing health.
The difference with France lies in a dimension often overlooked: the content of sectoral agreements. In Sweden, sectors with high physical demands—construction, metallurgy, home care—have negotiated specific ages for early retirement, rights to job modifications from age 60, and mechanisms for partial transition to retirement. The national agreement sets the framework; the sector adapts the conditions.
France raised the age without shifting employment
The French reform of 2023 set the legal age at 64, raised by two years, without union agreement. The process, resorting to Article 49.3 of the Constitution to avoid a parliamentary vote, was experienced as an imposition, and employment data bear its mark. In 2024, the rate is 42.4% according to the Eurostat series cited. That is 27.1 percentage points less than Sweden, and below the European Union average.
The gap is not solely due to the legal age. Raising the legal age without supporting changes to working conditions, job modification schemes, and sectoral agreements risks being insufficient to keep workers in employment. A worker forced to remain in employment until 64 in physically demanding work, with no possible modifications, often ends up on sick leave, disability, or unemployment, and exits the labor market before the legal age by another route. The net result: the legal age has increased while the employment rate of older workers has progressed, without reaching the levels of several European countries.
This phenomenon is documented in other contexts. The American Social Security system presents a comparable dynamic: health inequalities and life expectancy at the end of careers determine who actually bears the cost of an imposed extension. Less-qualified workers, in physically demanding occupations, absorb a disproportionate share of the burden.
The Netherlands bet on the negotiated automatic rule
Dutch architecture offers a third model, distinct from the two previous ones. The legal retirement age is indexed to life expectancy: when that increases by one year, the legal age increases by eight months. This rule, applied from 2025, was adopted with the agreement of union and employer organizations. It is automatic, no longer dependent on a vote or annual political decision.
A projection of legal age in 2060 is not established by the government source consulted in 2025, due to application of the formula five years in advance. Automatic indexation becomes more understandable in a context where healthy life expectancy continues to increase, and where working conditions for older workers have been the subject of specific investments since the 2000s. The Netherlands devotes approximately 0.5% of its payroll to job modification and retraining schemes for workers over 55, according to OECD data on active labor market policies.
The employment rate of 60-64 year-olds in the Netherlands exceeded 65% in 2024. The gap with France remains significant. What the Dutch model illustrates: the automatic indexation mechanism is part of public pension reform; social partners were consulted and involved in implementing measures aimed at more sustainable working lives. The Netherlands linked their pension agreement to resources for sustainable employability; the existence of the same systematic association in Sweden is not established by the sources consulted.
Physical demands and qualification: who bears the cost of extended working life
Behind national averages hide very unequal realities. Extending working life does not weigh equally on an executive in telework and on a care assistant, mason, or heavy truck driver. This asymmetry is documented throughout Europe.
In France, data from Dares (Directorate of Labor Research, Studies and Statistics of the Ministry of Labor) indicate that unskilled workers and employees leave the labor market before executives, even without early voluntary retirement. These exits occur through disability, long-term unemployment, or sick leave. Raising the legal age without addressing physical demands presents the risk of leaving these workers in precarious situations, with exits from the labor market through disability or long-term unemployment.
Sweden has partially solved this problem through sectoral bargaining. In Swedish construction, for example, the negotiated minimum retirement age is 62, two years before the general minimum. In personal services, partial transition schemes allow reducing working time to 60% from age 62, with partial pension compensation. These mechanisms are financed by specific employer contributions, negotiated sector by sector. They make extending working careers physically sustainable.
The question of qualification intersects with that of physical demands. Skills tensions in Europe particularly affect intermediate occupations, where physical demands are real and replacement by automation remains partial. Keeping these workers in employment until 67 or 70 requires investments in continuing education and retraining that few European countries have yet deployed at the right scale.
The 2040-2060 period: established constraints and choices remaining open
The 2040-2060 period concentrates the major demographic effects in Europe. Baby boom generations will then all be retired, and working cohorts will be smaller. The Eurostat 2100 projection corresponds to approximately 1.7 people aged 15-64 per person aged 65 or older, with increasing pressure beginning this decade. Pressure on pay-as-you-go systems will be structural and prolonged.
Two trajectories are emerging, depending on the institutional choices of the coming years. If European countries adopt sectoral bargaining frameworks on working conditions, with sector-specific modifications and rights to job adjustment, older workers’ employment rates could progress toward the levels of Nordic countries. This shift could reduce pressure on pay-as-you-go systems by improving the social acceptability of reforms. This trajectory requires decisions in the 2025-2030 window: sectoral agreements take ten to fifteen years to change actual company practices.
If, conversely, governments raise legal ages through unilateral decisions without negotiation on conditions, maintaining older workers’ employment rates could prove difficult, as the gaps observed between countries suggest. Wear would concentrate on less-qualified workers and those in demanding jobs, reinforcing health inequalities at the end of careers and the risk of political fracture.
These two scenarios are not forecasts. They are conditional trajectories, dependent on institutional choices governments and social partners are making today. Two signals will allow distinguishing them over time: the evolution of the employment rate of 60-64 year-olds in countries that reformed through negotiation versus unilateral legislative decision, and the share of sectoral agreements including explicit clauses on working conditions for older workers.
The Dutch experience highlights a combination of two instruments: sectoral agreements including sectoral adaptations of retirement ages, and job modification schemes financed by specific mechanisms. The Swedish model rests on a sectoral bargaining framework similar, but the existence of an identical architecture is not established. Negotiation with social partners combined with investments in working conditions contributes to the acceptability of extended working life. Without them, a raise in the legal age modifies pension access rules and can also increase employment, with varying effects, without necessarily translating into a sustained increase in older workers’ employment rates.
The challenge for European decision-makers in coming years is to distinguish the administrative measure, the age inscribed in law, from the sought result: workers actually in employment, in good health, to a more advanced age. In the Netherlands, the reform was negotiated with social partners. In Sweden, occupational pensions fall under collective agreements by major sectors; distinct policies, discussed with social partners, also aim at sustainable working life for older workers.
Sources
- Courthouse News Service, Europe ages faster than US but which faces the bigger crisis?
- European Commission, The 2024 Ageing Report (Publications Office of the EU, 2024)
- Eurostat, Employment rates by age group, 2024 (data on employment rate of 60-64 year-olds by country)
- Dutch Government, Pension reform and age projections, 2025
- Pensionsmyndigheten (Swedish Pensions Agency), Annual Report 2024
- OECD, Active Labour Market Policies database, expenditure by country for older workers
- Dares (French Ministry of Labor), Employment of older workers: data on labor market exits by socioprofessional category
