This blog already has discussed the current declining and aging populations of many countries, and their impact on employment in those countries. [1]
Here are some additional articles on these subjects.
Wall Street Journal Analysis [2]
“Employers in healthcare, education, leisure and hospitality and other services such as dry cleaning and automotive repair . . . [accounted] for 63% of all [recent U.S,] private-sector job gains. .. . In January alone, restaurants and bars added a seasonally adjusted 99,000 jobs. The healthcare industry grew by 58,000, and retailers added 30,000 jobs.”
This result is helped by “more workers . . .searching for jobs: bigger paychecks and benefits, diminishing fear of getting sick, and financial worries amid high inflation.” Also “more women are flowing back into the labor force, which could help service-sector employers fill positions that traditionally have been held by women.”
Increased U.S. Immigration [3]
Last year U.S. net immigration increased by about a million people, and the “foreign-born work force grew much more quickly than the U.S.-born work force.” This “helped power the job recoveries in leisure and hospitality and in construction, where immigrants make up a higher share of employment, and where there were bigger increases in wages and job vacancies.”
This employment result happened despite the inadequate staffing of the U.S. immigration agencies, resulting in huge delays in acting on asylum applications as well as those for green cards and work permits. “One of the few industries with unlimited immigrant visas is agriculture, where the number of guest worker visas “has risen by double-digit percentages over each of the last few years, reaching 371,000 in 2022.”
Difficulties in Raising Birth Rates [4]
Echoing the pessimism of Ross Douthat of the New York Times caused, in part, by China’s recent declining birth rate and population, other Time’s authors say, “History suggests that once a country crosses the threshold of negative population growth, there is little its government can do to reverse it. And as a country’s population grows more top-heavy, a smaller, younger generation bears the increasing costs of caring for a larger, older one. . . . That’s because the playbook for boosting national birthrates is a rather thin one. Most initiatives that encourage families to have more children are expensive, and the results are often limited. Options include cash incentives for having babies, generous parental leave policies and free or subsidized child care.”
This more recent Times article claims, “many young Chinese are not interested in having large families. Vastly more young Chinese people are enrolling in higher education, marrying later and having children later. Raised in single-child households, some have come to see small families as normal. But the bigger impediment to having a second or third child is financial, [and] many parents cite the high cost of housing and education as the main obstacle to having more children.”
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[1] See these posts to dwkcommentaries.com: Another Defining Challenge of the 21st Century (Jan. 28, 2023); Skepticism About Douthat’s Defining Challenge of the 21st Century (Jan. 30, 2023); Comment: Developments in Africa and Italy Accentuate Douthat’s Concerns (Jan. 31, 2023); Iowa State Government Encouraging Refugee and Migrant Resettlement (Feb. 3, 2023);Comment: National Worker Shortages in U.S. (Feb. 3, 2023); Economists Surprised by January’s New Jobs Data (Feb. 4, 2023); Sub-Saharan Africa Is ‘New Epicenter’ of Extremism, Says UN, (Feb. 8, 2023); Migrant Workers Being Paid Premium Wages in U.S. Tight Labor Market, (Feb. 8, 2023).
[2] Cambon & Smith, Mass Layoffs or Hiring Boom? What’s Actually Happening in the Jobs Market, W.S.J. (Feb. 9, 2023).
[3] DePills, Immigration Rebound Eases Shortage of Workers, Up to a Point, N.Y. Times (Feb. 6, 2023).
[4] Jacobs & Paris, Can China Reverse Its Population Decline? Just Ask Sweden, N.Y. Times (Feb. 9, 2023).
China’s Failing Efforts To Spark a Baby Boom
The above post discusses the difficulties of any country’s raising its birth rate to counter a declining population as well as China’s difficulties in convincing its younger citizens to have more babies.
Now a New York Times article reports that one province is urging its younger citizens to procreate even if they are unmarried while some Chinese cities are urging college students to donate sperm to help spur more births and plans are being developed to expand national insurance coverage for fertility treatments.
But these Chinese measures have been met with public skepticism, ridicule and debate because they do not address younger people’s anxieties about supporting their aging parents and managing the rising costs of education, housing and health care. There have been similar reactions to such measures in many other countries around the world.
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Hong & Wang, Desperate for Babies, China Races to Undo an Era of Birth Limits. Is It Too Late?, N.Y. Times, Feb.26, 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/world/asia/china-birth-rate.html.