The High Commissioner for Strategy and Planning released a report titled Choosing Your Work Tomorrow on September 10, 2026, examining how demographic changes are affecting France's pension system. The report predicts that the number of working-age individuals compared to retirees will decline from three to one in 2025 to 2.6 by 2035 and further to 2.2 by 2050. This shift could reduce the financial base supporting pensions while increasing costs linked to aging, including healthcare and long-term care. To address these challenges, the report proposes various options, such as improving tax collection, slowing the rate at which pensions increase, or increasing the number of workers and the length of their careers. The report favors the last approach, suggesting that boosting the amount of work could help maintain social revenues and reduce the negative impacts of an aging population on economic growth. In 2025, France's employment rate for people aged 15 to 64 was 69%, slightly below the 71% average in the European Union. The report highlights the potential of older workers as a largely untapped labor reserve. It envisions an increase of three to four additional years of contributions by 2050, with retirement age varying depending on when individuals began working. According to Antoine Foucher, the report's head, someone who started working at 18 would retire at 64, whereas those who began at 23-24 would retire at 70. The report acknowledges that extending working careers uniformly might unfairly affect those with long periods of education, unemployment, or career breaks. It proposes adjusting the rules for earning pension rights, such as counting 150 hours of work as a quarter of contribution or using a points system where "each euro paid in opens the same rights." These changes aim to better support people with non-linear career paths and reduce abrupt changes in eligibility under the current system. The 2023 reform, which aimed to gradually raise the retirement age to 64, is still on hold, with the current legal retirement age temporarily set lower for different generations. While political discussions continue to focus on the retirement age, the report shifts attention to total working duration and how rights are earned. It also raises broader economic questions, noting that a shrinking active population could hurt growth if productivity improvements are not sufficient. Increasing the employment rate is seen as a way to boost both production and public revenues. Clément Beaune supports the idea of "reinventing a prosperity model through work," while the High Commissioner argues that the post-war economic model is no longer sustainable. The success of extending working careers depends on keeping older workers employed. Simply delaying the contribution period without increasing employment rates could transfer costs to unemployment insurance or other social systems. The report links pension reform to employment policies, training, and workplace health. It emphasizes the need to increase the number of people in the workforce or the amount of work each person does, favoring a combination of both approaches, especially for seniors, young people, and those with incomplete careers. However, the report does not address wage levels, which have only partially kept up with productivity gains over the past fifty years.