China’s Demographics: Workforce may decline 23% by 2050

BEIJING:  

The size of China’s workforce may decline by as much as 23% by 2050, a government official said, as the population of the world’s second-largest economy rapidly ages. China’s working age population, defined as those between the ages of 16 and 59, peaked in 2011 and would soon “experience a process of sharp decline”, particularly after 2030, said Li Zhong, a spokesman for the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, at a news conference. He forecast that last year’s tally of 911 million people of working age could fall as low as 700 million by 2050 - a decline of over 23%. “Over the long term, macro-level data analysis shows that we must focus on the development of human resources as a whole, and study how to more fully and more efficiently make use of labor resources,” he said Friday.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2016.

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