Japan's employment rate is hard to compare, in that many of these job just wouldn't be seen as real jobs in any other country ("bullshit job"), and it's compound by half of the population being over 50. A high employment among the elderly could just be masking the harsher truth when that upper half passes away.

It's still 10s of millions of people who could be given a job (and some hope and purpose too btw)

Edit: btw I agree there's more to life than work. But when you're unemployed and hoping for work, competing against robots and LLMs is quite crushing.