How will the households with different employment status distribute in Japan during the depopulation century

Japan’s household employment composition is undergoing a fundamental transformation driven by demographic shifts, workforce restructuring, and urbanization patterns. This study employs advanced deep learning methodologies and dynamic updating techniques to forecast the spatial distribution of different household types, including agricultural, mixed, non-agricultural, and no-employee households, at a 500-meter grid resolution from 2020 to 2100 under a continuation-of-trends scenario. All outputs for 2100 are conditional projections under this scenario rather than definitive forecasts. The validation R 2 was 99.45% for the 2025 prediction and 99.93% for the 2100 prediction, while the corresponding MAE decreased from 0.88 to 0.31 households per grid. The projected national household count reaches 67.281 million by 2100; notably, no-employee households increase from 20.56 million, 37.76% of all households, in 2020 to 40.87 million, 60.74%, in 2100. Spatially, urban centers such as Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya experience a significant rise in no-employee households, while non-agricultural households remain dominant but exhibit signs of contraction in certain regions. Meanwhile, agricultural and mixed households continue their decline, concentrated in depopulating rural areas. The findings underscore the profound socio-economic implications of household restructuring, necessitating policy interventions to address rising economic disparities, workforce challenges, housing demands, and future urban planning.