Baby boomers to fill labour shortage

Harumi Okubo, 79, (right) and her colleague Tomoko Horiuchi, 58, baking oyaki, a Japanese pastry filled with vegetables or sweet bean paste. Of the 70 employees in the company, 25 are over 60. — Photos: dpa

Harumi Okubo’s dainty hands fill a row of round dumplings with vegetables. She lines them up next to a simmering hob.

Okubo, 79, has been baking oyaki, a pastry filled with vegetables or sweet bean paste, at a restaurant in her home village of Ogawa in Japan’s mountainous Nagano Prefecture for the last six years.