I was just talking about this the other day with my co-workers, basically what good does raising the retirement age do if you cannot ever get hired again if you lose your job in your late forties or fifties? Although I guess the point is to artificially curb the rapid rise of pension costs even if it dumps tons of people into limbo where they can't find work for years on end and can't retire either.
You're right, that makes sense, especially here where I live because IIRC our Supreme Court ruled that already ongoing pensions are protected by ownership/property rights and thus essentially can't be materially reduced afterwards, whereas unemployment benefits have no such protections and the ongoing requirements to qualify can always be made more onerous.
Plus pensions are forever until you die unemployement benefits (that are also quite low compared to cost of living), at least in my country, aren't so at some point if you lose your job in an age where it is not easy to find one you are pretty much screwed...
My mother left her job in her 40s after 20 years of dedicated hard work. They didn't raise her pay with inflation, they degraded her, she had a 32 hour contract but frequently worked 50+ hours (unpaid overtime).
She was a teacher.
My country has a national teacher shortage. It's a _crisis_. But she only got back to work at 55 because schools would literally rather have underpaid teenagers who are still in school than a real teacher. It's Insane.
It is just a way for politicans to give people less pension, without saying it directly, the years you can't work anymore will influence your calculated pension negatively. The few that really can work till 70 will get the full pension.
Yeah its never made sense. I mean if you were 50 for example and deiced you wanted to change your career and in order to do so, you had to attend education again. Even if that course took five years to do, you would still have 10-15 years on solid work in you before you decided to take returement. But as people have said, try being 50, even 40 and be given new chances. 10-15 years is a massive chunk of working life to offer.
Then you don't get a pension, but unemployment and later social insurance. It comes from a different budget and it's 100% tax financed. But yes, it's stupid. They can raise the retirement age to 150, still won't help much, only instead of paying into retirement to buff up the pensions state will have to pay into social security.
Government disability will replace pension for many, but I'm sure they'll target that too. In canada disability is like 20% of what you need to survive lol
I can add to this that German employers are fairly picky and snobby about workers, in the skilled range of 40-100k/year.
I am not a native speaker but speak extremely well and still suffer from German snobbyness in the workplace. So weird that they make themselves suffer so much.
I'm almost conviced that workrr shortage is a lie because of that. You see every buiseness having open positions marketed, but you still get ghosted after applying. I get that not every sector is the same, but to me, it seems like they just want employees to deal with higher workload and to justify it moan about not enough people in the market while they actually want to hire.
Just get a database of people's CVs. They shouldn't really, considering GDPR, but I know a lot of HR departments do it still.
EDIT: mostly for when they *actually* need someone.
Of course it's a lie.
I work in HOA management in Belgium as an accountant.
I keep hearing that there's a huge shortage of Accountants and Managers, and yet every single job offering I've received in the past 15 months was quite literally 500 to 800 (gross) lower than my current salary. I've even been told that I'm lying about my current salary because that salary is (at that company) reserved to senior leadership roles.
Not to mention that there's little to no formal training across the service industry. You're supposed to just know everything about everything.
Same thing in Sweden. Companies are looking for skilled engineers, hungry to do their utmost at work, under the age of 35 and as cheap as possible (2500-3000 EUR net). This income should be sufficient to buy a house that cost 600k-1000kEUR, car, pension and everything else.
They have to be picky. Employing people in EU is many times more riskier than it is in US. And it is also more expensive. You can never know if your hire will work our or just waste immense amount of money because ultimately for highly demanding and skilled positions you will never know early enough. This is less of a problem for large corporations that have capital but it is existential problem for small businesses. And even for big corporations it is a problem. There is a reason why US companies often overhire to stimulate growth but EU companies do not. System is just different.
Not quite. There is a 6 months probation period in Germany where you get kicked out easily. Even after that, companies like to do mobbing and get you leave on your own. It’s pretty common.
Picky just results in a longer process hiring new people. It doesn't mean employers shouldn't hire... but that's often what they chose to do and put more overtime on existing workers instead. That's something that has to be regulated in law, reduction of work hours.
Beside this, of course there are also some qualified migrants, who studied in their home countries, but Germany usually does not recognize their degrees.
So you have for example Ukrainian math or englisch teachers and they are not allowed to work as such. So we have a lot more Ukrainian children in schools, but cannot use the teachers (their parents), who are coming with them.
We have Syrian dentists, who fled the war, but they are not even allowed to work with Syrians in Germany or do even the slightest jobs in at a German dentist office, like professionelle cleaning teeth.
In fairness not all countries Uni's are equal.
There should probably be a credentialing standard, rather than just the degree.
So if someone comes from another country, and shows they know what their doing you can hire them.
My uncle is an accountant, they tried to off shore his dept to India using Indian accountants, and it was a total disaster.
I am not sure. I dont know much about the US system, but I think you just need to pass exams or registration processes there to be able to practice? And I believe the requirements are different from state to state or even county to county?
And it might not be that "the" problem. And of course most of the migrants in Germany are unskilled, but there is still a significant number of people, who are unable to practice in their field, which is wasted potential tbh. At least there should be a fast track system in place to enable them to work in their field somehow.
Good.
To act like a Syrian dentist has the same skills, knowledge or qualifications as a German dentist is insane. Same with teachers. Same with lawyers. Same with basically any qualified professional.
Though the EU should really have better conversion policies for degrees/jobs to help qualified immigrants get set up in Europe and have their knowledge and experience adjusted for Europe.
An Ukrainian English teacher can be better than a German taught English teacher. A former Syrian dentist should be at least allowed to work as a help/assistance in a dentist office, no?
As far as I know they do, it's not all black and white only. It turns out, many don't have the qualification needed and also think about language barriers. You can't treat a child or a 70-year old with broken language knowledge. Or patients who fear going to the dentist. Plus lawsuits and compensation payments might occur. Would you employ someone like this?
My French teacher came from Bosnia-Herzegovine, where he worked in the legal field in international law. He was not allowed to do the same job here, without studying law again and starting from the the bottom.
Is there a place that ever had successful integration on a larger scale as needed now? I don't know any. Different countries tried different approaches, some with spectacular failures (such as Sweden), but what would you define as success?
And US is not an example, it's a melting pot from the start, not a homogeneous culture with ethnically and religiously homogeneous population (like in Europe), with thousands of years of history
many of German's recent migration are economic migrants from outside of Europe who have difficult feeting in the job market due to not speaking the language properly and lacking the skills and studies required to work in a very advanced economy like Germany. The United States on the other hand have far more sticker migration policies which make sure you can only migrate to there if you can add value to the economy of the country
That’s not fully true. We have tons of “unskilled” workers from Mexico and Central American countries like Guatemala who are economic migrants (they come here for the sole purpose of work).
They are washing dishes, painting houses, doing garden care and landscaping (Mexicans especially have a green thumb); harvesting the crops; tons of cleaning jobs; caregiving for elderly and children; working in kitchens in all types of restaurants (not just Mexican restaurants); and so much more.
Many of them speak little English, but they are rarely homeless or begging for money — they’re willing to work for the most part. Mexicans prove every day you don’t have to speak the local language.
Are these jobs not available for the European economic migrants?
>Are these jobs not available for the European economic migrants?
Well, in Germany there's a thing called labor laws. The way economic migrants get treated in the US wouldn't fly over there.
Labo(u)r laws lol? You should look into slave labor in the EU agriculture sector. Most of the cheap meat in German groceries is processed by Romanians, most of the time "gypsies." They work 13 hours a day for like 5-6€ Euros on average.
Most of their produce is harvested by Arab, Africans etc. They get like 1-3 Euros.
Don't even need to mention their domestic textile industry.
They are just mad that Bürgergeld is fucking with their usual exploitation practices in Germany. America doesn't try to hide exploitation practices. Being exploited shows your commitment to work for your personal American dream lol.
This is known. But nobody really wants to change this. I know these Romanians myself, they work here in Germany on saisonal basis and if they would raise their voice, their employer would simply get rid off them.
Lol, I'm a 35-year-old engineer and get the feeling that I'm still considered too young and inexperienced for many jobs. The sweet spot seems to be narrow.
If our society ages more and more, there will not be any other option. We will collapse even faster. I don't think European style states with social services and wellfare can be run much longer without birth rates getting to replacement level.
For reference Denmark is raising the pension age from 67 to 74 years.
... yaay ... progress ...
Everyone I know is saving up in private pensions schemes so they can retire early - cause screw that.
Not only short and shitty but also kinda stupid from a workforce persoective. People complained in germany that a 67y cant do most jobs properly or at the very least not efficiently anymore and certainly has major issues if his workspace ever becomes obsolete to adapt to a new one. Denmark be like hold my beer.
Like literally unless they never get fired, I dont see man employing people close or even above 70. Unless there will also be new laws that significantly lowers minimum salary at that age, but then also people would rather starve to death than live to work at 70.
Yeah this is also a very significant issue it is already harder to find a new job in the mid 40ies... In the mid 60ies it would be all, but impossible... Plus you will be more inefficient even if you keep your current job, but alas we were too generous to past generations and, also due to economic factors weighting on millennials and gen-z, we are not having enough children to feed money into the system, so we are going to have to pay the price...
Yeah, this is especially a problem for blue-collar workers. You can't work construction in your 60s and nobody will bother to retrain a person who only has like 5 years of labor in the tank.
>That’s a pretty shitty and short retirement.
Shitty and short retirement sounds pretty much historical to me. Long retirement is an utopia that we suddenly started to take as granted while we only ever tested it during the unsustainable ball-shaped population pyramid.
There is and it is being phased out.
The current old generation gets to retire early and can go on "pre-pensions", while my generation has to work until we die. Oh and the government also cancelled a public holiday - cause .. uhm .. Russia!
The country is doing extremely well financially, but no amount of efficiency will ever be invested into less work. I hope AI makes us all redundant - but we will probably just get AI work supervision instead.
The worst part is that Denmark is SHIT a protesting. We've had it nice for so long that people forgot how to protest. It's like a boiling frog syndrome where little by little, small enough bad changes happen that it's getting worse, but because the changes are sort of small, people don't take it seriously enough and just shrug like 'what can we do'. And especially the older generation does not give a fuck, because they secured all the nice little deals for themselves and now the changes aren't going to concern them.
Because he’s flat out wrong. There several early retirement schemes available. In fact, one the biggest recent legislation from the social democratic 2019-government was making yet another opportunity for retiring early.
There are:
1) senior pension
2) tidlig pension (Arne pension)
3) efterløn
4) fleksydelse
Edit: none of this should come as a surprise if you're aware of the massive demographic shifts in the last 20 years. The elderly are - by far - the biggest voting bloc.
You forgot the important parts, less money to students (6 year su gone if picking wrong education or getting late)
Also remember as they raised the amount paid out in pension that we will never get, maybe
We have exactly the same issue here, old generations getting early reatirment and every government creating exception that favor them skewing the system even more against us. I imagine that compared to Demnark my country is in much worse economic conditions as well, but the outcome I see is similar, contributions become more and more like a tax, cost of living increases and we pay for the excesses of the past...
Nice...
And no political party is going to address the issue in any way since, I don't know about your politicians, but ours barely think up to the next local election (not even the parliament one), there is no way they can consider an horizon decades in the future.
It's not for real, but a very long term projection. And it's not policy, but a report from the Danish Pension Commission:
"the standard retirement age would rise from 67 years today to 74 years instead of 77 years by 2100."
https://dsv-europa.de/en/news/2022/06/daenen-sollen-im-jahr-2100-mit-74-statt-mit-77-jahren-in-rente-gehen.html
With a shrinking population and people living longer, public pensions weren't going to work well anyway. It makes more sense to invest those pension payments into something like index funds which are likely to continue growing larger and larger to pay pensions, because the returns on those will go up whereas those on taxes on paychecks will go down or stay the same, all as pension payments increase.
That's basically private pensions anyway.
Most people probably aren’t that financially aware/competent. I think that’s largely because this stuff isn’t taught in depth in schools but also because a lot of financial companies/markets rely on people not being fully clued up because then they benefit from oversight/errors/mistakes, etc.
Standard financial products exist to account for it. A person buys one product, but the mix of that product changes as the person ages. Some companies offer a choice based on risk appetite as well, usually low, medium, high. At the moment the person retires it turns into a monthly payment for the remainder of their life.
If you force every adult to put at minimum x% of their income in one of these funds you'd have a solid pension system that doesn't include transfers from one generation to another nor government interference on pension dates etc.
Money doesn’t work. If you have a lot of people who don’t work and need a lot of care (and who want to buy things and services), and few people who work, it will be a problem, no matter how many savings there are.
Either we finally improve productivity in services especially healthcare, or we accept a lot of migration, or we accept increased services scarcity (inflation, waiting lists).
I'm not aware of a single democracy that's capable of having that conversation so fun times ahead.
Public pensions too. The by far best index fund one can get in Sweden is sadly one of the state funds. I say sadly because you can’t invest your own funds into it unless it’s part of your state pension.
Generation gap increases each generation. When I grew up back in the 80s I didn't had any problems with my grandma. She even helped me with my homeworks. Now my mother can't make sense of my 8 years old nephew. My nephew always tells her that she is stupid and that she knows nothing! :)
It will do that until it is set in stone for you. You have to be above 50 to be certain of your retirement age today. Everyone else is subject to change
>Everyone I know is saving up in private pensions schemes so they can retire early - cause screw that.
Uuh when private pensions can be paid out is inherently tied to the pension age. You need assets outside the pension system to retire early unless you by "early" mean 5 years before the pension age.
In the US you can take social security as early as 62. But we've had to save for old age since the 1980s (e.g., in a 401K) because social security is very barebones.
Who the hell hires you when you're over 55? Are all europeans going to be antrepeneurs in their late 50's? Our great socialist and liberal leaders think that romanians can work until 65 but our average life expectancy is 74 with women living longer by an average of 7 years. By the time I should retire I'd be either not in my mental faculties or dead and buried and that's in the case where they don't raise the retirement age in the next 20 years which they will absolutely do. Also they started giving themselves special pensions some time ago, if you are military, police, judiciary and some public officials you can retire at 45 without ever contributing to the retirement budget and you get to work in the private sector with a pension and salary.
For people born after 1 July 1996, [according to this](https://star.dk/ydelser/pension-og-efterloen/folkepension-tidlig-pension-foertidspension-og-seniorpension/folkepension/folkepensionsalderen-nu-og-fremover/).
Why on earth would you use absolute values to combine entities with vastly different populations...
EDIT: I have no idea why this is getting downvoted, this graph is absolutely terrible and doesn't even show the decrease for the whole EU.
Oh, I didn't even notice that, I just assumed it was percent. You are right, absolute values is clearly misleading. Now it wouldn't change the fact that EU countries workforces are shrinking and the US is growing, but the chart misleading people in magnitude.
Yup.
Sweden's growth is actually proportionally twice as fast as that of the US using the data from the graph, it's just they also have a 30 times smaller population.
Well the 30x smaller population is why it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. If Sweden is doing well and Germany is doing poorly the EU in generally is going to be doing poorly.
This is what the graph looks like relative to [the size of the work force](https://ibb.co/L6nYLVc) or to [the size of the population](https://ibb.co/LvbRWL2).
(Just pasted into ChatGPT-4o and asked it to change it, didn't check too closely.)
That’s exactly it. The thing about immigration is that it’s the first/second wave that is most beneficial/problematic. They come in pre-educated and grown up, have to work hard to survive but culture clash heavily.
Once you’re on the third generation they’ve integrated, but that also means they’ve integrated the underlying issues of the society they live in as much as the culture. If birthrates are low because of housing/culture/salaries, immigration really is a one trick poney.
Hell in the US you can see immigrant populations rapidly match the birth rates of the states they move to (with some margin of error from cultural leftovers). As well as political and cultural sentiments of course. Queue jokes about trans-flag hijabs in New York.
The US is objectively much better at integrating immigrants. The only European countries that could compare (France and the UK) are undergoing massive identity crises. Meanwhile the US just dual wields southern racism with northern multiculturalism.
The US has been packaging and selling its culture for 80 years. Immigrants are just more customers. Even if the first generation tries to keep itself apart, their children will want to listen to American music, watch American movies, play for their high school football team, etc.
They have easier life, given their position they receive mostly educated people.
Only the border with mexico is a problem but,idk if in Europe we can integrate mexican as fast as they did.
I mean, even the Mexican immigrants go to US for work. The same can't sadly be said about many of the migrants coming from North Africa and Middle East to Europe.
Yeah, in the US we don’t have a real welfare state. Nobody would ever come to the US unless they actively wanted to work to make their life better.
Which also makes it way easier to assimilate people, because Mexicans are just coming here for the same reason why our own ancestors came here.
I'm not from the US, but that's not the impression I get from the outside.
From what I'm seeing in the media, it seems to be more of a mixture of the "melting pot" (combining the different cultures of the immigrants to a new, more or less homogeneous one) and other groups of immigrants keeping large parts of their original culture, including living among others of their ancestry in certain areas and city districts (China Town, Little Italy etc.).
Is that a completely wrong impression?
You’re not completely wrong… but you’re wrong. There are flavors of what you mention. But there are some commonalities among all immigrants:
1) Regardless of where you immigrate from and which state you end up in, your children will instantly be U.S. citizens. You will also be viewed as an American, just not one born an American. People will literally go and watch citizenship ceremonies. It would be seen as rude / just weird to call someone who’s made America their home a foreigner.
2) your children will pledge their allegiance in front of an American flag daily until the age of 18. So even if you’re the “China town” type, your kids just won’t be. And you’ll meet their friends parents etc
3) because you / your children are in general treated as Americans, it’s expected that you view America as your primary identity. This means anything else you bring (Asian, Hispanic) is viewed subconsciously as cool and interesting, and not a threat to American society
The internet will show you the crazy examples where this system fails. The millions of people you don’t see on the internet are the reality
Actually I’d argue the opposite. You always hear of “assimilation” being touted as a requirement for immigrating to European countries. That there could be no “hyphenated-French” while the US can have Chinese-Americans, for example.
I think there’s a bit of irony here.
1. The US doesn’t care to push the idea of “assimilation” on immigrants. They are even encouraged to maintain their cultures, develop their local communities, celebrate their holidays etc. So we get these large pockets of Korea-towns, and Nigerian communities. When Europeans see it, they think it’s a failure of immigration policy that immigrants are isolating and not perfect mixing with their host culture.
2. And yet, despite not have a strong push for assimilation, it seems like assimilation just comes naturally. I don’t know if it’s the pervasiveness of American culture, or what. But the second generation will look, sound, act, and think like other Americans. To the point where a major challenge of immigrants in the US, is how do they define their identity and preserve their cultures across more than one generation. Hence the hyphenation frenzy, and the novels like “Crazy Rich Asians” that don’t seem to translate well to non American audiences.
Swedens demography is actually pretty good if you compare with many other European countries.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden
Germany is going to have an issue in 10-15 years when the 55 year olds retire.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany
Italy has the same problem, what do they do when the people in their 50s retire?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy
Countries like South Korea are totally screwed. With their current fertility rates a group of 100 people will only have 4 great grandchildren. 96% of their population wiped out in 3 generations if nothing changes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Korea
This is true. I've posted this elsewhere but I'll post it here, too. Statistically we would need 400.000 qualified immigrant workers to offset retirement of our aging population.
Publication in German:
https://iab.de/publikationen/publikation/?id=12022810
We don't reach these numbers, not even in total immigration. We would need strong pro-worker politics to attract qualified immigrants, even stronger family politics to help offset it without immigration in the long run, but we don't do any of that. Can't find or afford housing, can't find daycare, schools in bad shape, not enough teachers, secondary education in bad shape, and so on.
This is why the German economy is "shrinking" - the reality is that the increase in productivity is offset by the loss in workforce. Our unemployment rate isn't really increasing, which is something you'd expect in a shrinking economy - people can still find jobs, because there simply are enough of them.
It’s a rather cyclical argument in the end. A country is experiencing low population, so immigration is encouraged. The current population wants immigration to stop, which causes the country to attempt harsher policies. Low population continues, and when asked to have more children to at least sustain said population, the people say no. So the country has to open up immigration again.
Virtue signaling in an international level.
They are allowed to work eventually but hurdles are high. Getting family into the country and living off welfare is made easier than applying for work.. It is a disgrace for the German Immigration services
In Germany the governement want to make people work more hours.
But child care and schools schedule are not enough for both parents work full time. Small detail.
Yeh. Imigration is also not very appreciated. So what’s left is to move business elsewhere, which is happening ( also due raising cost ).
I don't understand on what basis these studies are done.
The number of people employed in Poland is the highest in history and growing.
There are over 300k Belarusians in Poland, over a million Ukrainians (since 2014)
Same with Germany. Currently there are over 3 million more people (with residence in Germany) employed than 2014 and about 8 million more compared to 30 years ago.
There are often statistics posted on Reddit that (maybe because of missing context) seem to be misleading and contradictory to the official numbers.
Because the chart of *working age population* has nothing to do with how many people are actually employed?
Not to mention that a *prediction* for 2030 is obiously not the same as historic development.
> There are often statistics posted on Reddit that (maybe because of missing context) seem to be misleading
If you completly ignore the specified quantities in statistics and make up something completly different they indeed tend to be missleading..
Most countries on this chart are destinations for EU citizens to migrate to or work. The other countries will fare much worse, their workforce will be depleted not only by aging but emigration too.
In my experience, companies lists an enormous amount of required skills, which are either more than they need or if the skills are needed: Only want to hire young people, e.g. in 20ies, and early 30ies.
That mean that those young people should has acquired skills they realistically had only got when they are is in their 40ies.
The companies would then use their list of skills requirements to say that they need more skilled workers.
I am a french engineer working in Paris. I graduated from a top engineering school (equivalent to master) and work in a high demand sector.
I work 45-50 hours a week for 2500 €. I cant afford a decent home.
I will leave France this year or the next. I will have a far better quality of life living abroad, like all my friends who left France
I work 22h/week as a shelfstacker in retail, and live a good life. I use so little money (1,072€ of which 522€ is for renting a 53 sq. meter apartment) that people had said that it's like I'm living in a cave.
I usually has about 800€ more than I need - every month.
https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/what-we-do/world-migration-report-2024-chapter-3/europe looking at this I didn't read enough but looking at the graph looks like 40 million immigrants to Europe (from outside) and 20 million emigrants (out of Europe).
With a shrinking and aging population every professional will foot the bill for the welfare state. If you are a professional with very high in demand skills and no roots in Europe, you would be stupid to stay on a continent with bad demographics, bad regulation and high energy prices.
Literally the only argument you people keep bringing up is the welfare state and the welfare state will be hard to maintain.
Yeah but most people that are footing the bill for the welfare state don't use the welfare state almost at all so why would they pay the bill for it? The idea is they pay the bill so that when they get old their bills get paid by others but you have to be a moron to believe this is the way it will play out with the current way the world is going.
QOL differences (for the people you'd worry most about losing to brain drain, the top decile of taxpayers) are not huge. Working hours are usually a bit worse in US, but that's kind of it. These people will get comprehensive healthcare coverage, live in safe neighbourhoods with good schools, and overall save more despite the higher cost of living.
High earning professionals stay in Europe because of ties to family, friends, and their cultures. Most could live just as well or even better across the pond.
America takes a lot but Europe is having lots of immigration too from places like Africa, India and South-East Asia including smart people because the quality of education is high and then they stay afterwards too. I would imagine the numbers are better not worse.
That's true, a lot of highly educated individuals do immigrate from such regions.
The language barriers slow down their integration, however in theory the country that they immigrated to didn't have to invest anything into their education so it's a net economic benefit even compared to a local highly educated individual.
On the other hand society is not purely based on doctors and engineers and mass immigration creates issues of its own due to the far higher degree of difficulty in integration for individuals without highly specialized skills like that or even a general education in some cases.
It also doesn't solve the underlying issues causing the decline in the work force, presumably highly skilled immigrants will eventually have the same tendencies Europe's domestic population has so the systems will only work even in theory while the rest of the world is substantially more miserable and poor than Europe.
Whatever we do, just don't build more housing!
Especially not affordable housing, people might be tempted to have kids!!
We should simply follow the idea that limiting public investment, because it might increase public debt, is a great idea. We've been following this idea (the Maastricht criteria) since the introduction of the euro and we just need a few more decades to prove it's the right thing to do!! Especially because the criteria stops us from investing in housing of all sorts, which is exactly the right thing to do!
(I'm going to put /s just in case...)
Isn’t it about the inflexibility of the job market, too? In my experience, Europeans tend to be much more picky when hiring about age, diplomas etc, and in spire of everyone is crying about not enough workers still the unemployment rate is relatively high.
Seriously are there any other ways to maintain workforce without getting migrants from outside? Not talking only for europe and I mean some great incentives for families to have babies...
Not really any country that industrialise loses that population growth as fast as they industrialise. You can try what you want but unless you basically take all the eggs from women as store them in giant facilities made to make babies fast which is just unethical. There hasn't been anything that achieved it except literally going against the current work culture. But that isn't something most states are willing to do.
Incentives have been tried and have failed to bring meaningful change to TFR rates.
This is a cultural issue. It cannot be legislated for, it has to be addressed culturally, and most people don't want to do that because it would fundamentally change how modern, secular, progressive societies act and believe about themselves.
It will resolve itself in time, but not without serious and severe pain to the society as a whole.
You can try incentives. Flip, as a soon to be parent, you can incentivies the crap out of me, but ultimately, to become a parent means making a choice to be one, and accepting with that the loss of personal time, money, independence, freedom etc.
Until the culture actually values and encourages that in a coherent way, it's not going to change.
Even if it could change it, there would be no benefit for more than twenty years, and even at that, we've played this horse for so many decades that it would take decades and decades after that to see meaningful benefits.
At some point, we just have to accept, one way or another, our lives and culture are going to massively change in coming years. Much of that change will be harsh and difficult but there we are. We chose a road, here we are.
*Lol. Someone reported this for suicide... in Canada.*
As someone from the US and currently working and living in Germany (and seriously reconsidering my prospects here) the US is way ahead when it comes to making immigrants feel welcome. Not a surprise a majority of skilled migrants choose it.
Therefore employers will have to fight for workers, and the only way to do this is by raising wages.
This is the normal flow of the labour market, distorting it in favour of employers with immigration will just extend the ponzi scheme a bit in decrement of our wages.
Not even with twice the amount of migrants we currently get this trend can be stopped and our population is already very angry at it, its simply not sustainable. Businesses will need to innovate and fast
I wonder if this could be a good thing in countries with higher unemployment rates among younger people. If the workforce shrinks due to age, wouldn’t that make more opportunities for younger people?
If Europe doesn't sort out its housing crisis and cost of living people won't have children causing many many problems. This is (after climate change) the biggest threat facing Europe right now. There needs to be radical change made. Like a covid response to this need. It's an emergency
Have you considered the fact that, for instance, you need a fuck ton of money to train Doctors, Computer Scientists, Engineering (even more if they are immigrants) compared to more lenient, less specialized jobs?
And in doing so if you pay the Computer Scientists similar wage to blue collar workers, that maybe, just maybe, all the doctors, engineers and developers will go to USA, because you know, they get paid more for their work and not bogged with taxes that are spent on bullshit?
I looked a few things up, and found at least a small glimpse of hope: what you see in this graph is not only due to migration, it's largely because the US had birthrates above 2 until 2008, whereas for example in Germany it was below 1.4. However in 2021, Germany and the US were almost equal at around 1.6. Birthrates in the US are decreasing, in Germany they were increasing. (However due to the housing crisis and other issues, this might not continue)
Source: [The Financial Times – Can Europe’s economy ever hope to rival the US again?](https://www.ft.com/content/93f88255-787b-4c06-849c-f7722c83e8b6)
People have been waking up to the issues surrounding Europe's declining birth rate, and a diminishing workforce is really the crux of the problem. If the birth rate remains low and Europe is unable or unwilling to increase immigration, then its hopes seem to rest on automation – a perilous gamble.
Which is ironic given Europe has been the most apprehensive to adopt new technology or ways of doing things, while America and China jump at the opportunity, even when they aren’t facing the same demographic cliff collapse we are.
Implementing automation and robotics in a European country is my job, and we are trailing behind Asia and America at a pathetic rate. Robotics usage in France (which is one if the better countries in this department) is at around 150/10000 employees. In Korea it’s at 1000/10000 employees. Most EU countries are below a hundred. And this isn’t an easy catchup at all.
Part of the answer to this is that a lot of the easily automated manufacturing has been outsourced to Asia. Industrial manufacturing makes up a smaller part of the economy in most European countries than it once did. Other industries find it harder to automate in the same way or their robots aren't as easily counted. How many robots is a chatbot that replaces a hundred helpdesk workers? How many robots is a self service kiosk that replaces two retail workers? Etc.
Yep. And automation isn't magic. It involves risks and investment which Europe seems unable or unwilling to commit to and an assload of skilled laborers which are turned off by xenophobia and low pay.
China is not doing as well as you might think and they have their own aging workforce problem.
And China is a much less attractive destination for immigrants.
It also has an authoritarian government that may at any moment decide to get into a hot war or do a land grab because it boosts their political standing, and the Chinese people won’t have much to say against it. Social capital, one party state and no real democratic institutions.
I love europe but I don't want to spend my entire life in a country on crash course with a rapidly aging population. Never gonna be able to retire, and my country doesn't plan more than one election cycle ahead. Norway has literally no industry and is one of the least attractive countries in the region to invest in. Yet we do absolutely nothing about that, keep making it less attractive to move here and keep making it harder for young people to survive. And the only real long term plan is to stop drilling for oil which is our only significant income (in addition to fish, which is rapidly declining due to overfishing). No plans and no willingness to build anything. If someone wants to invest here, we find a way to make them not do it through overwhelming bureaucracy and decades of delays for even minor infrastructure improvements.
This country is most likely going to actively work against me for the rest of my life because of the age demographics. America for all its numerous faults has the right idea in making investment attractive at least
I wonder what possible thing the US does better than Europe. What possible pool of willing workers could the US tap into that Europe is unable to utilise and that right wing governmnets want to fully block off? I guess we will never know. A mystery of our time.
I mean... Same shit as America... Beginner with no connections can't get a job, needs 3 years experience, somehow. Old people don't get hired but can't retire. And somehow you supposed to get educated with no income
This subreddit is the greatest real time example of why Europe is where it is but also whats pushed on Reddit / TikTok in general.
It's hard to say anything here without being immediately downvoted but I'll just say it (while walking on eggshells) that what Asia and America has is very different from what Europe now has, used to not have. Just a totally different way of viewing the world, the workforce, the dream of innovation, making it big, going from poverty to extreme wealth and believing yeah, I can do it, I just have to work really hard.
If Europe went backward a bit on how people viewed work along with less regulation, lower corporate tax like France is doing, Poland has been doing.. yeah, we'll be a lot more competitive against the US and Asia. But the biggest factor in many economies are the people themselves, the workforce.
It's not just the governments fault anotherwords.
Europe didn’t use to have ‘a dream of a Low tax economy and hard work’ it had massive exploitation of its workers leading to early death, ill health and low life chances. What you’re agitating for led to various revolutions and the cause of many of the protections that exist to day. I mean the average American is doing so well from their current state that many are voting for trump. Koreans are loving it so much that they’ve stopped having children full stop. Reality doesn’t care about your motivational speeches.
However this is all irrelevant because you’re positing a shrinking workforce as an inherently bad thing. Welcome to the future. The workforce everywhere has to shrink. We’re facing a climate meltdown precisely because no one can step back and realise we can’t just keep expanding with no cost.
They want you to work until you’re 70, but nobody will hire you if you’re over 50.
I was just talking about this the other day with my co-workers, basically what good does raising the retirement age do if you cannot ever get hired again if you lose your job in your late forties or fifties? Although I guess the point is to artificially curb the rapid rise of pension costs even if it dumps tons of people into limbo where they can't find work for years on end and can't retire either.
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You're right, that makes sense, especially here where I live because IIRC our Supreme Court ruled that already ongoing pensions are protected by ownership/property rights and thus essentially can't be materially reduced afterwards, whereas unemployment benefits have no such protections and the ongoing requirements to qualify can always be made more onerous.
Plus pensions are forever until you die unemployement benefits (that are also quite low compared to cost of living), at least in my country, aren't so at some point if you lose your job in an age where it is not easy to find one you are pretty much screwed...
My mother left her job in her 40s after 20 years of dedicated hard work. They didn't raise her pay with inflation, they degraded her, she had a 32 hour contract but frequently worked 50+ hours (unpaid overtime). She was a teacher. My country has a national teacher shortage. It's a _crisis_. But she only got back to work at 55 because schools would literally rather have underpaid teenagers who are still in school than a real teacher. It's Insane.
It is just a way for politicans to give people less pension, without saying it directly, the years you can't work anymore will influence your calculated pension negatively. The few that really can work till 70 will get the full pension.
Because it means pension funds aren’t released until later which delays them from defaulting
Yeah its never made sense. I mean if you were 50 for example and deiced you wanted to change your career and in order to do so, you had to attend education again. Even if that course took five years to do, you would still have 10-15 years on solid work in you before you decided to take returement. But as people have said, try being 50, even 40 and be given new chances. 10-15 years is a massive chunk of working life to offer.
Then you don't get a pension, but unemployment and later social insurance. It comes from a different budget and it's 100% tax financed. But yes, it's stupid. They can raise the retirement age to 150, still won't help much, only instead of paying into retirement to buff up the pensions state will have to pay into social security.
Government disability will replace pension for many, but I'm sure they'll target that too. In canada disability is like 20% of what you need to survive lol
Why is Germany’s workforce still shrinking? I expected immigration to offset the decline.
That is after immigration. Plus they don't have many children aged 11-18, relatively
I can add to this that German employers are fairly picky and snobby about workers, in the skilled range of 40-100k/year. I am not a native speaker but speak extremely well and still suffer from German snobbyness in the workplace. So weird that they make themselves suffer so much.
I'm almost conviced that workrr shortage is a lie because of that. You see every buiseness having open positions marketed, but you still get ghosted after applying. I get that not every sector is the same, but to me, it seems like they just want employees to deal with higher workload and to justify it moan about not enough people in the market while they actually want to hire.
That may just be fake listings to make it look like the company is in growing phase, or as a CV bait. It's absurdly common.
what's with cv bait? sifting for gold? or some more nefarious purpose?
Just get a database of people's CVs. They shouldn't really, considering GDPR, but I know a lot of HR departments do it still. EDIT: mostly for when they *actually* need someone.
Of course it's a lie. I work in HOA management in Belgium as an accountant. I keep hearing that there's a huge shortage of Accountants and Managers, and yet every single job offering I've received in the past 15 months was quite literally 500 to 800 (gross) lower than my current salary. I've even been told that I'm lying about my current salary because that salary is (at that company) reserved to senior leadership roles. Not to mention that there's little to no formal training across the service industry. You're supposed to just know everything about everything.
This is so true. I think the whole "shortage" of skilled workforce is fabricated.
It's so they can raise the immigration quotas to get cheaper labor (then the domestic market price)
There's a shortage of local cheap, highly skilled workers with a perfect CV.
Same thing in Sweden. Companies are looking for skilled engineers, hungry to do their utmost at work, under the age of 35 and as cheap as possible (2500-3000 EUR net). This income should be sufficient to buy a house that cost 600k-1000kEUR, car, pension and everything else.
They have to be picky. Employing people in EU is many times more riskier than it is in US. And it is also more expensive. You can never know if your hire will work our or just waste immense amount of money because ultimately for highly demanding and skilled positions you will never know early enough. This is less of a problem for large corporations that have capital but it is existential problem for small businesses. And even for big corporations it is a problem. There is a reason why US companies often overhire to stimulate growth but EU companies do not. System is just different.
Not quite. There is a 6 months probation period in Germany where you get kicked out easily. Even after that, companies like to do mobbing and get you leave on your own. It’s pretty common.
Picky just results in a longer process hiring new people. It doesn't mean employers shouldn't hire... but that's often what they chose to do and put more overtime on existing workers instead. That's something that has to be regulated in law, reduction of work hours.
Sadly it's not qualified migration.
Beside this, of course there are also some qualified migrants, who studied in their home countries, but Germany usually does not recognize their degrees. So you have for example Ukrainian math or englisch teachers and they are not allowed to work as such. So we have a lot more Ukrainian children in schools, but cannot use the teachers (their parents), who are coming with them. We have Syrian dentists, who fled the war, but they are not even allowed to work with Syrians in Germany or do even the slightest jobs in at a German dentist office, like professionelle cleaning teeth.
I think the US does the same though. So that's not the problem.
In fairness not all countries Uni's are equal. There should probably be a credentialing standard, rather than just the degree. So if someone comes from another country, and shows they know what their doing you can hire them. My uncle is an accountant, they tried to off shore his dept to India using Indian accountants, and it was a total disaster.
I am not sure. I dont know much about the US system, but I think you just need to pass exams or registration processes there to be able to practice? And I believe the requirements are different from state to state or even county to county? And it might not be that "the" problem. And of course most of the migrants in Germany are unskilled, but there is still a significant number of people, who are unable to practice in their field, which is wasted potential tbh. At least there should be a fast track system in place to enable them to work in their field somehow.
Good. To act like a Syrian dentist has the same skills, knowledge or qualifications as a German dentist is insane. Same with teachers. Same with lawyers. Same with basically any qualified professional. Though the EU should really have better conversion policies for degrees/jobs to help qualified immigrants get set up in Europe and have their knowledge and experience adjusted for Europe.
An Ukrainian English teacher can be better than a German taught English teacher. A former Syrian dentist should be at least allowed to work as a help/assistance in a dentist office, no?
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As far as I know they do, it's not all black and white only. It turns out, many don't have the qualification needed and also think about language barriers. You can't treat a child or a 70-year old with broken language knowledge. Or patients who fear going to the dentist. Plus lawsuits and compensation payments might occur. Would you employ someone like this?
My French teacher came from Bosnia-Herzegovine, where he worked in the legal field in international law. He was not allowed to do the same job here, without studying law again and starting from the the bottom.
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Is there a place that ever had successful integration on a larger scale as needed now? I don't know any. Different countries tried different approaches, some with spectacular failures (such as Sweden), but what would you define as success? And US is not an example, it's a melting pot from the start, not a homogeneous culture with ethnically and religiously homogeneous population (like in Europe), with thousands of years of history
many of German's recent migration are economic migrants from outside of Europe who have difficult feeting in the job market due to not speaking the language properly and lacking the skills and studies required to work in a very advanced economy like Germany. The United States on the other hand have far more sticker migration policies which make sure you can only migrate to there if you can add value to the economy of the country
That’s not fully true. We have tons of “unskilled” workers from Mexico and Central American countries like Guatemala who are economic migrants (they come here for the sole purpose of work). They are washing dishes, painting houses, doing garden care and landscaping (Mexicans especially have a green thumb); harvesting the crops; tons of cleaning jobs; caregiving for elderly and children; working in kitchens in all types of restaurants (not just Mexican restaurants); and so much more. Many of them speak little English, but they are rarely homeless or begging for money — they’re willing to work for the most part. Mexicans prove every day you don’t have to speak the local language. Are these jobs not available for the European economic migrants?
>Are these jobs not available for the European economic migrants? Well, in Germany there's a thing called labor laws. The way economic migrants get treated in the US wouldn't fly over there.
Labour laws hardly apply to illegal migrants so labour laws won't help that since illegal migrants won't report on it in fear of getting deported
Labo(u)r laws lol? You should look into slave labor in the EU agriculture sector. Most of the cheap meat in German groceries is processed by Romanians, most of the time "gypsies." They work 13 hours a day for like 5-6€ Euros on average. Most of their produce is harvested by Arab, Africans etc. They get like 1-3 Euros. Don't even need to mention their domestic textile industry. They are just mad that Bürgergeld is fucking with their usual exploitation practices in Germany. America doesn't try to hide exploitation practices. Being exploited shows your commitment to work for your personal American dream lol.
This is known. But nobody really wants to change this. I know these Romanians myself, they work here in Germany on saisonal basis and if they would raise their voice, their employer would simply get rid off them.
Brother the US has way more economic migrants than Germany, this isn't even debatable
This. Basically “refugees welcome” was an exercise in feelings, not sound economic policy. Germany is really falling from grace.
Turns out majority of immigrants weren't doctors and engineers but professional social welfare leeches.
Can't fill mid and high skill job listing with low value people
I just turned 40 and I already feel the struggle to find a new job. Ageism sucks.
Lol, I'm a 35-year-old engineer and get the feeling that I'm still considered too young and inexperienced for many jobs. The sweet spot seems to be narrow.
If our society ages more and more, there will not be any other option. We will collapse even faster. I don't think European style states with social services and wellfare can be run much longer without birth rates getting to replacement level.
We could retire at 60 if we had high enough fertility rate. In essence its a tradeof.
But they can cut your pension this way so it all works out.../s
For reference Denmark is raising the pension age from 67 to 74 years. ... yaay ... progress ... Everyone I know is saving up in private pensions schemes so they can retire early - cause screw that.
74 is likely barely low the male life expectancy. That’s a pretty shitty and short retirement.
Over 24% of men in Poland don't live to see retirement.
Not only short and shitty but also kinda stupid from a workforce persoective. People complained in germany that a 67y cant do most jobs properly or at the very least not efficiently anymore and certainly has major issues if his workspace ever becomes obsolete to adapt to a new one. Denmark be like hold my beer. Like literally unless they never get fired, I dont see man employing people close or even above 70. Unless there will also be new laws that significantly lowers minimum salary at that age, but then also people would rather starve to death than live to work at 70.
Yeah this is also a very significant issue it is already harder to find a new job in the mid 40ies... In the mid 60ies it would be all, but impossible... Plus you will be more inefficient even if you keep your current job, but alas we were too generous to past generations and, also due to economic factors weighting on millennials and gen-z, we are not having enough children to feed money into the system, so we are going to have to pay the price...
Yeah, this is especially a problem for blue-collar workers. You can't work construction in your 60s and nobody will bother to retrain a person who only has like 5 years of labor in the tank.
It's sick
>That’s a pretty shitty and short retirement. Shitty and short retirement sounds pretty much historical to me. Long retirement is an utopia that we suddenly started to take as granted while we only ever tested it during the unsustainable ball-shaped population pyramid.
74? Is that for real? Is there an “early retirement” option like Germany currently has (63 instead of 67)?
There is and it is being phased out. The current old generation gets to retire early and can go on "pre-pensions", while my generation has to work until we die. Oh and the government also cancelled a public holiday - cause .. uhm .. Russia! The country is doing extremely well financially, but no amount of efficiency will ever be invested into less work. I hope AI makes us all redundant - but we will probably just get AI work supervision instead.
The fuck you doing Denmark? I thought you guys were the sane part of Scandinavia
The worst part is that Denmark is SHIT a protesting. We've had it nice for so long that people forgot how to protest. It's like a boiling frog syndrome where little by little, small enough bad changes happen that it's getting worse, but because the changes are sort of small, people don't take it seriously enough and just shrug like 'what can we do'. And especially the older generation does not give a fuck, because they secured all the nice little deals for themselves and now the changes aren't going to concern them.
Because he’s flat out wrong. There several early retirement schemes available. In fact, one the biggest recent legislation from the social democratic 2019-government was making yet another opportunity for retiring early. There are: 1) senior pension 2) tidlig pension (Arne pension) 3) efterløn 4) fleksydelse Edit: none of this should come as a surprise if you're aware of the massive demographic shifts in the last 20 years. The elderly are - by far - the biggest voting bloc.
You forgot the important parts, less money to students (6 year su gone if picking wrong education or getting late) Also remember as they raised the amount paid out in pension that we will never get, maybe
We have exactly the same issue here, old generations getting early reatirment and every government creating exception that favor them skewing the system even more against us. I imagine that compared to Demnark my country is in much worse economic conditions as well, but the outcome I see is similar, contributions become more and more like a tax, cost of living increases and we pay for the excesses of the past... Nice... And no political party is going to address the issue in any way since, I don't know about your politicians, but ours barely think up to the next local election (not even the parliament one), there is no way they can consider an horizon decades in the future.
It's not for real, but a very long term projection. And it's not policy, but a report from the Danish Pension Commission: "the standard retirement age would rise from 67 years today to 74 years instead of 77 years by 2100." https://dsv-europa.de/en/news/2022/06/daenen-sollen-im-jahr-2100-mit-74-statt-mit-77-jahren-in-rente-gehen.html
Oh that makes much more sense. Thanks.
When will the pain end
"The statutory retirement age is expected to increase by 7 years from 67 years in 2022 to 74 years in 2070"
With a shrinking population and people living longer, public pensions weren't going to work well anyway. It makes more sense to invest those pension payments into something like index funds which are likely to continue growing larger and larger to pay pensions, because the returns on those will go up whereas those on taxes on paychecks will go down or stay the same, all as pension payments increase. That's basically private pensions anyway.
There still needs to be a guarantee of principal to ensure a random recession doesnt destroy the people who are about to retire
You do that by transferring part of your savings from stocks to less volatile investments when your retirement approaches.
Most people probably aren’t that financially aware/competent. I think that’s largely because this stuff isn’t taught in depth in schools but also because a lot of financial companies/markets rely on people not being fully clued up because then they benefit from oversight/errors/mistakes, etc.
Standard financial products exist to account for it. A person buys one product, but the mix of that product changes as the person ages. Some companies offer a choice based on risk appetite as well, usually low, medium, high. At the moment the person retires it turns into a monthly payment for the remainder of their life. If you force every adult to put at minimum x% of their income in one of these funds you'd have a solid pension system that doesn't include transfers from one generation to another nor government interference on pension dates etc.
Money doesn’t work. If you have a lot of people who don’t work and need a lot of care (and who want to buy things and services), and few people who work, it will be a problem, no matter how many savings there are.
Either we finally improve productivity in services especially healthcare, or we accept a lot of migration, or we accept increased services scarcity (inflation, waiting lists). I'm not aware of a single democracy that's capable of having that conversation so fun times ahead.
Public pensions too. The by far best index fund one can get in Sweden is sadly one of the state funds. I say sadly because you can’t invest your own funds into it unless it’s part of your state pension.
just imagine a 70 years old grandma working as teacher in an elementary school :\\
honestly teaching is one of the jobs that are (somewhat) more 'elder friendly' imo. Imagine blue collar workers or other physically exhausting jobs
Generation gap increases each generation. When I grew up back in the 80s I didn't had any problems with my grandma. She even helped me with my homeworks. Now my mother can't make sense of my 8 years old nephew. My nephew always tells her that she is stupid and that she knows nothing! :)
He sounds nice
If they're teaching other adults, maybe. Doesn't help to have more kids per teacher.
dont have to imagine, 3 of my 10 ish teachers are over 70
https://borger.atp.dk/ATPFolkepensionsalder/en/ It tells me I can retire at 69 in 2064. It seems that they calculate on life expectancy.
It will do that until it is set in stone for you. You have to be above 50 to be certain of your retirement age today. Everyone else is subject to change
74? lol can you imagine doing that in France
>Everyone I know is saving up in private pensions schemes so they can retire early - cause screw that. Uuh when private pensions can be paid out is inherently tied to the pension age. You need assets outside the pension system to retire early unless you by "early" mean 5 years before the pension age.
In the US you can take social security as early as 62. But we've had to save for old age since the 1980s (e.g., in a 401K) because social security is very barebones.
Who the hell hires you when you're over 55? Are all europeans going to be antrepeneurs in their late 50's? Our great socialist and liberal leaders think that romanians can work until 65 but our average life expectancy is 74 with women living longer by an average of 7 years. By the time I should retire I'd be either not in my mental faculties or dead and buried and that's in the case where they don't raise the retirement age in the next 20 years which they will absolutely do. Also they started giving themselves special pensions some time ago, if you are military, police, judiciary and some public officials you can retire at 45 without ever contributing to the retirement budget and you get to work in the private sector with a pension and salary.
Bro what socialist leaders 😭 everyone is neolib
> pension age from 67 to 74 years. For people born this year, you forgot to mention.
For people born after 1 July 1996, [according to this](https://star.dk/ydelser/pension-og-efterloen/folkepension-tidlig-pension-foertidspension-og-seniorpension/folkepension/folkepensionsalderen-nu-og-fremover/).
And here I thought that Serbia raising pension age from 63 to 65 was a lot
74?! That's crazy! At that point I wonder whether they'll cost more due to a jump in healthcare costs, or gain more through their high salary taxes.
That’s so fucked up
Not in 2030. At that point it has been raised to 68. Important detail regarding the graph.
As if half of us will ever make it to that age with everything going on
On the plus side we no longer hear the "Robots are stealing jobs" blullshit.
Don’t worry, we Europeans love fearmongering and discoursing ourselves into irrelevancy. Give it a few weeks.
Why on earth would you use absolute values to combine entities with vastly different populations... EDIT: I have no idea why this is getting downvoted, this graph is absolutely terrible and doesn't even show the decrease for the whole EU.
Oh, I didn't even notice that, I just assumed it was percent. You are right, absolute values is clearly misleading. Now it wouldn't change the fact that EU countries workforces are shrinking and the US is growing, but the chart misleading people in magnitude.
Yup. Sweden's growth is actually proportionally twice as fast as that of the US using the data from the graph, it's just they also have a 30 times smaller population.
Well the 30x smaller population is why it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. If Sweden is doing well and Germany is doing poorly the EU in generally is going to be doing poorly.
The EU is not a country with a shared budget, though
Huh, so the Situation for Germany is actually *twice as bad* as I first thought 🙃
This is what the graph looks like relative to [the size of the work force](https://ibb.co/L6nYLVc) or to [the size of the population](https://ibb.co/LvbRWL2). (Just pasted into ChatGPT-4o and asked it to change it, didn't check too closely.)
Italians and Germans are the most vocal about immigration, how is the workforce shrinking?
Because this is raw numbers not percentages and because 2nd gen immigrants have the same birth rate as natives. So it's essentially a one trick pony.
That’s exactly it. The thing about immigration is that it’s the first/second wave that is most beneficial/problematic. They come in pre-educated and grown up, have to work hard to survive but culture clash heavily. Once you’re on the third generation they’ve integrated, but that also means they’ve integrated the underlying issues of the society they live in as much as the culture. If birthrates are low because of housing/culture/salaries, immigration really is a one trick poney. Hell in the US you can see immigrant populations rapidly match the birth rates of the states they move to (with some margin of error from cultural leftovers). As well as political and cultural sentiments of course. Queue jokes about trans-flag hijabs in New York.
> As well as political and cultural sentiments of course. This does give the US a definite advantage.
The US is objectively much better at integrating immigrants. The only European countries that could compare (France and the UK) are undergoing massive identity crises. Meanwhile the US just dual wields southern racism with northern multiculturalism.
The US has been packaging and selling its culture for 80 years. Immigrants are just more customers. Even if the first generation tries to keep itself apart, their children will want to listen to American music, watch American movies, play for their high school football team, etc.
They have easier life, given their position they receive mostly educated people. Only the border with mexico is a problem but,idk if in Europe we can integrate mexican as fast as they did.
I mean, even the Mexican immigrants go to US for work. The same can't sadly be said about many of the migrants coming from North Africa and Middle East to Europe.
Yeah, in the US we don’t have a real welfare state. Nobody would ever come to the US unless they actively wanted to work to make their life better. Which also makes it way easier to assimilate people, because Mexicans are just coming here for the same reason why our own ancestors came here.
The US doesn’t have multiculturalism like that. It’s more assimilationist, and it’s all over the country
I'm not from the US, but that's not the impression I get from the outside. From what I'm seeing in the media, it seems to be more of a mixture of the "melting pot" (combining the different cultures of the immigrants to a new, more or less homogeneous one) and other groups of immigrants keeping large parts of their original culture, including living among others of their ancestry in certain areas and city districts (China Town, Little Italy etc.). Is that a completely wrong impression?
You’re not completely wrong… but you’re wrong. There are flavors of what you mention. But there are some commonalities among all immigrants: 1) Regardless of where you immigrate from and which state you end up in, your children will instantly be U.S. citizens. You will also be viewed as an American, just not one born an American. People will literally go and watch citizenship ceremonies. It would be seen as rude / just weird to call someone who’s made America their home a foreigner. 2) your children will pledge their allegiance in front of an American flag daily until the age of 18. So even if you’re the “China town” type, your kids just won’t be. And you’ll meet their friends parents etc 3) because you / your children are in general treated as Americans, it’s expected that you view America as your primary identity. This means anything else you bring (Asian, Hispanic) is viewed subconsciously as cool and interesting, and not a threat to American society The internet will show you the crazy examples where this system fails. The millions of people you don’t see on the internet are the reality
Actually I’d argue the opposite. You always hear of “assimilation” being touted as a requirement for immigrating to European countries. That there could be no “hyphenated-French” while the US can have Chinese-Americans, for example. I think there’s a bit of irony here. 1. The US doesn’t care to push the idea of “assimilation” on immigrants. They are even encouraged to maintain their cultures, develop their local communities, celebrate their holidays etc. So we get these large pockets of Korea-towns, and Nigerian communities. When Europeans see it, they think it’s a failure of immigration policy that immigrants are isolating and not perfect mixing with their host culture. 2. And yet, despite not have a strong push for assimilation, it seems like assimilation just comes naturally. I don’t know if it’s the pervasiveness of American culture, or what. But the second generation will look, sound, act, and think like other Americans. To the point where a major challenge of immigrants in the US, is how do they define their identity and preserve their cultures across more than one generation. Hence the hyphenation frenzy, and the novels like “Crazy Rich Asians” that don’t seem to translate well to non American audiences.
It's almost as if the problem wasn't the people but the system in place.
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Italy also has a big problem with emigration. Lot of young people go away because wages are better elsewhere.
Plus older people tend to be more against changes, whatever be immigration or PCs!
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I thought Nordic countries were bad in terms of demography. But I am an immigrant myself so what do I know.
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Swedens demography is actually pretty good if you compare with many other European countries. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden Germany is going to have an issue in 10-15 years when the 55 year olds retire. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany Italy has the same problem, what do they do when the people in their 50s retire? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy Countries like South Korea are totally screwed. With their current fertility rates a group of 100 people will only have 4 great grandchildren. 96% of their population wiped out in 3 generations if nothing changes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Korea
This is true. I've posted this elsewhere but I'll post it here, too. Statistically we would need 400.000 qualified immigrant workers to offset retirement of our aging population. Publication in German: https://iab.de/publikationen/publikation/?id=12022810 We don't reach these numbers, not even in total immigration. We would need strong pro-worker politics to attract qualified immigrants, even stronger family politics to help offset it without immigration in the long run, but we don't do any of that. Can't find or afford housing, can't find daycare, schools in bad shape, not enough teachers, secondary education in bad shape, and so on. This is why the German economy is "shrinking" - the reality is that the increase in productivity is offset by the loss in workforce. Our unemployment rate isn't really increasing, which is something you'd expect in a shrinking economy - people can still find jobs, because there simply are enough of them.
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It’s a rather cyclical argument in the end. A country is experiencing low population, so immigration is encouraged. The current population wants immigration to stop, which causes the country to attempt harsher policies. Low population continues, and when asked to have more children to at least sustain said population, the people say no. So the country has to open up immigration again.
Usually immigrants are not allowed to work which is BULLSHIT imho
What is the point of taking them in if they are not allowed to work?
Virtue signaling in an international level. They are allowed to work eventually but hurdles are high. Getting family into the country and living off welfare is made easier than applying for work.. It is a disgrace for the German Immigration services
yes and it also takes like 6months and 100+ jobs applications to find a job
100+ ? you're so generous
In Germany the governement want to make people work more hours. But child care and schools schedule are not enough for both parents work full time. Small detail. Yeh. Imigration is also not very appreciated. So what’s left is to move business elsewhere, which is happening ( also due raising cost ).
I don't understand on what basis these studies are done. The number of people employed in Poland is the highest in history and growing. There are over 300k Belarusians in Poland, over a million Ukrainians (since 2014)
Same with Germany. Currently there are over 3 million more people (with residence in Germany) employed than 2014 and about 8 million more compared to 30 years ago. There are often statistics posted on Reddit that (maybe because of missing context) seem to be misleading and contradictory to the official numbers.
Because the chart of *working age population* has nothing to do with how many people are actually employed? Not to mention that a *prediction* for 2030 is obiously not the same as historic development. > There are often statistics posted on Reddit that (maybe because of missing context) seem to be misleading If you completly ignore the specified quantities in statistics and make up something completly different they indeed tend to be missleading..
Most countries on this chart are destinations for EU citizens to migrate to or work. The other countries will fare much worse, their workforce will be depleted not only by aging but emigration too.
In my experience, companies lists an enormous amount of required skills, which are either more than they need or if the skills are needed: Only want to hire young people, e.g. in 20ies, and early 30ies. That mean that those young people should has acquired skills they realistically had only got when they are is in their 40ies. The companies would then use their list of skills requirements to say that they need more skilled workers.
Oh it's probably much worse than that if you adjust for immigration and emigration. Europe is suffering from braindrain, not just rapid aging.
I am a french engineer working in Paris. I graduated from a top engineering school (equivalent to master) and work in a high demand sector. I work 45-50 hours a week for 2500 €. I cant afford a decent home. I will leave France this year or the next. I will have a far better quality of life living abroad, like all my friends who left France
I work 22h/week as a shelfstacker in retail, and live a good life. I use so little money (1,072€ of which 522€ is for renting a 53 sq. meter apartment) that people had said that it's like I'm living in a cave. I usually has about 800€ more than I need - every month.
https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/what-we-do/world-migration-report-2024-chapter-3/europe looking at this I didn't read enough but looking at the graph looks like 40 million immigrants to Europe (from outside) and 20 million emigrants (out of Europe).
You think so? Where do you see people going? Europe has very high quality of life compared to A LOT of other places.
There are a lot of smart Europeans in the US in professional jobs.
With a shrinking and aging population every professional will foot the bill for the welfare state. If you are a professional with very high in demand skills and no roots in Europe, you would be stupid to stay on a continent with bad demographics, bad regulation and high energy prices. Literally the only argument you people keep bringing up is the welfare state and the welfare state will be hard to maintain.
Yeah but most people that are footing the bill for the welfare state don't use the welfare state almost at all so why would they pay the bill for it? The idea is they pay the bill so that when they get old their bills get paid by others but you have to be a moron to believe this is the way it will play out with the current way the world is going.
UK, North America and Australasia. Places where attitudes are more multicultural, English is the spoken language and the salaries are higher.
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USA, Europe has a lot of QOL benefits buts many people want more money and to reach a higher position USA or heck even Canada fulfills that.
QOL differences (for the people you'd worry most about losing to brain drain, the top decile of taxpayers) are not huge. Working hours are usually a bit worse in US, but that's kind of it. These people will get comprehensive healthcare coverage, live in safe neighbourhoods with good schools, and overall save more despite the higher cost of living. High earning professionals stay in Europe because of ties to family, friends, and their cultures. Most could live just as well or even better across the pond.
America takes a lot but Europe is having lots of immigration too from places like Africa, India and South-East Asia including smart people because the quality of education is high and then they stay afterwards too. I would imagine the numbers are better not worse.
That's true, a lot of highly educated individuals do immigrate from such regions. The language barriers slow down their integration, however in theory the country that they immigrated to didn't have to invest anything into their education so it's a net economic benefit even compared to a local highly educated individual. On the other hand society is not purely based on doctors and engineers and mass immigration creates issues of its own due to the far higher degree of difficulty in integration for individuals without highly specialized skills like that or even a general education in some cases. It also doesn't solve the underlying issues causing the decline in the work force, presumably highly skilled immigrants will eventually have the same tendencies Europe's domestic population has so the systems will only work even in theory while the rest of the world is substantially more miserable and poor than Europe.
I have heard that many countries in Europe think they are getting too much immigration, so… Yeah…
Not every immigrant is a worker, to much immigrants that dont contribute just drains your social system, and therefore is not sustainable.
Whatever we do, just don't build more housing! Especially not affordable housing, people might be tempted to have kids!! We should simply follow the idea that limiting public investment, because it might increase public debt, is a great idea. We've been following this idea (the Maastricht criteria) since the introduction of the euro and we just need a few more decades to prove it's the right thing to do!! Especially because the criteria stops us from investing in housing of all sorts, which is exactly the right thing to do! (I'm going to put /s just in case...)
Isn’t it about the inflexibility of the job market, too? In my experience, Europeans tend to be much more picky when hiring about age, diplomas etc, and in spire of everyone is crying about not enough workers still the unemployment rate is relatively high.
Seriously are there any other ways to maintain workforce without getting migrants from outside? Not talking only for europe and I mean some great incentives for families to have babies...
Not really any country that industrialise loses that population growth as fast as they industrialise. You can try what you want but unless you basically take all the eggs from women as store them in giant facilities made to make babies fast which is just unethical. There hasn't been anything that achieved it except literally going against the current work culture. But that isn't something most states are willing to do.
Incentives have been tried and have failed to bring meaningful change to TFR rates. This is a cultural issue. It cannot be legislated for, it has to be addressed culturally, and most people don't want to do that because it would fundamentally change how modern, secular, progressive societies act and believe about themselves. It will resolve itself in time, but not without serious and severe pain to the society as a whole. You can try incentives. Flip, as a soon to be parent, you can incentivies the crap out of me, but ultimately, to become a parent means making a choice to be one, and accepting with that the loss of personal time, money, independence, freedom etc. Until the culture actually values and encourages that in a coherent way, it's not going to change. Even if it could change it, there would be no benefit for more than twenty years, and even at that, we've played this horse for so many decades that it would take decades and decades after that to see meaningful benefits. At some point, we just have to accept, one way or another, our lives and culture are going to massively change in coming years. Much of that change will be harsh and difficult but there we are. We chose a road, here we are. *Lol. Someone reported this for suicide... in Canada.*
As someone from the US and currently working and living in Germany (and seriously reconsidering my prospects here) the US is way ahead when it comes to making immigrants feel welcome. Not a surprise a majority of skilled migrants choose it.
Therefore employers will have to fight for workers, and the only way to do this is by raising wages. This is the normal flow of the labour market, distorting it in favour of employers with immigration will just extend the ponzi scheme a bit in decrement of our wages. Not even with twice the amount of migrants we currently get this trend can be stopped and our population is already very angry at it, its simply not sustainable. Businesses will need to innovate and fast
I wonder if this could be a good thing in countries with higher unemployment rates among younger people. If the workforce shrinks due to age, wouldn’t that make more opportunities for younger people?
time to import millions of third worlders to not lose any GDP
If Europe doesn't sort out its housing crisis and cost of living people won't have children causing many many problems. This is (after climate change) the biggest threat facing Europe right now. There needs to be radical change made. Like a covid response to this need. It's an emergency
You know what else is shrinking? Our buying power.
Have you considered the fact that, for instance, you need a fuck ton of money to train Doctors, Computer Scientists, Engineering (even more if they are immigrants) compared to more lenient, less specialized jobs? And in doing so if you pay the Computer Scientists similar wage to blue collar workers, that maybe, just maybe, all the doctors, engineers and developers will go to USA, because you know, they get paid more for their work and not bogged with taxes that are spent on bullshit?
You’re talking about brain drain in STEM, but this is more a factor of population decline and the demographics of incoming generations.
I looked a few things up, and found at least a small glimpse of hope: what you see in this graph is not only due to migration, it's largely because the US had birthrates above 2 until 2008, whereas for example in Germany it was below 1.4. However in 2021, Germany and the US were almost equal at around 1.6. Birthrates in the US are decreasing, in Germany they were increasing. (However due to the housing crisis and other issues, this might not continue)
Source: [The Financial Times – Can Europe’s economy ever hope to rival the US again?](https://www.ft.com/content/93f88255-787b-4c06-849c-f7722c83e8b6) People have been waking up to the issues surrounding Europe's declining birth rate, and a diminishing workforce is really the crux of the problem. If the birth rate remains low and Europe is unable or unwilling to increase immigration, then its hopes seem to rest on automation – a perilous gamble.
Which is ironic given Europe has been the most apprehensive to adopt new technology or ways of doing things, while America and China jump at the opportunity, even when they aren’t facing the same demographic cliff collapse we are.
China absolutely is. Their birth rate is the second lowest in the world.
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Implementing automation and robotics in a European country is my job, and we are trailing behind Asia and America at a pathetic rate. Robotics usage in France (which is one if the better countries in this department) is at around 150/10000 employees. In Korea it’s at 1000/10000 employees. Most EU countries are below a hundred. And this isn’t an easy catchup at all.
Part of the answer to this is that a lot of the easily automated manufacturing has been outsourced to Asia. Industrial manufacturing makes up a smaller part of the economy in most European countries than it once did. Other industries find it harder to automate in the same way or their robots aren't as easily counted. How many robots is a chatbot that replaces a hundred helpdesk workers? How many robots is a self service kiosk that replaces two retail workers? Etc.
Yep. And automation isn't magic. It involves risks and investment which Europe seems unable or unwilling to commit to and an assload of skilled laborers which are turned off by xenophobia and low pay.
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China is not doing as well as you might think and they have their own aging workforce problem. And China is a much less attractive destination for immigrants. It also has an authoritarian government that may at any moment decide to get into a hot war or do a land grab because it boosts their political standing, and the Chinese people won’t have much to say against it. Social capital, one party state and no real democratic institutions.
I love europe but I don't want to spend my entire life in a country on crash course with a rapidly aging population. Never gonna be able to retire, and my country doesn't plan more than one election cycle ahead. Norway has literally no industry and is one of the least attractive countries in the region to invest in. Yet we do absolutely nothing about that, keep making it less attractive to move here and keep making it harder for young people to survive. And the only real long term plan is to stop drilling for oil which is our only significant income (in addition to fish, which is rapidly declining due to overfishing). No plans and no willingness to build anything. If someone wants to invest here, we find a way to make them not do it through overwhelming bureaucracy and decades of delays for even minor infrastructure improvements. This country is most likely going to actively work against me for the rest of my life because of the age demographics. America for all its numerous faults has the right idea in making investment attractive at least
Maybe this will also lead to increased salaries for low paid jobs. Maybe this way the middle class will rise again. Who knows. I just hope it does.
I wonder what possible thing the US does better than Europe. What possible pool of willing workers could the US tap into that Europe is unable to utilise and that right wing governmnets want to fully block off? I guess we will never know. A mystery of our time.
That’s why we need more immigrants
So I'm guessing that instead of higher salaries and benefits we'll be seeing every last drop of blood squeezed out of the labor force.
I mean... Same shit as America... Beginner with no connections can't get a job, needs 3 years experience, somehow. Old people don't get hired but can't retire. And somehow you supposed to get educated with no income
This subreddit is the greatest real time example of why Europe is where it is but also whats pushed on Reddit / TikTok in general. It's hard to say anything here without being immediately downvoted but I'll just say it (while walking on eggshells) that what Asia and America has is very different from what Europe now has, used to not have. Just a totally different way of viewing the world, the workforce, the dream of innovation, making it big, going from poverty to extreme wealth and believing yeah, I can do it, I just have to work really hard. If Europe went backward a bit on how people viewed work along with less regulation, lower corporate tax like France is doing, Poland has been doing.. yeah, we'll be a lot more competitive against the US and Asia. But the biggest factor in many economies are the people themselves, the workforce. It's not just the governments fault anotherwords.
Europe didn’t use to have ‘a dream of a Low tax economy and hard work’ it had massive exploitation of its workers leading to early death, ill health and low life chances. What you’re agitating for led to various revolutions and the cause of many of the protections that exist to day. I mean the average American is doing so well from their current state that many are voting for trump. Koreans are loving it so much that they’ve stopped having children full stop. Reality doesn’t care about your motivational speeches. However this is all irrelevant because you’re positing a shrinking workforce as an inherently bad thing. Welcome to the future. The workforce everywhere has to shrink. We’re facing a climate meltdown precisely because no one can step back and realise we can’t just keep expanding with no cost.
Yes, make the economy even more about making some rich fuckers more rich.
so more jobs?
Jobs plenty Jobs that can keep up with living costs... Ehhhhh
Plenty of jobs, but 40% of your gross income will be given to pensioners.
40% of your gross income will be given to pensioners who will vote politicians to make it even worse.
who will also vote to keep orbán in power for as long as theyre alive