Global Workforce Demographics – Part 1 of 4

Over 75% of the world’s goods and services are produced by a handful of countries.  With all the chatter around demographic trends and the talent crisis, I thought it would be interesting to examine age demographics for these countries and determine risks to our global economy.

  Analysis Scope

The World Bank lists 14 countries producing over 75% of the world’s goods and services in 2006, measured by GPD.

1. United States
2. Japan
3. Germany
4. China
5. UK
6. France
7. Italy
8. Canada
9. Spain
10. Brazil
11. Russian Federation
12. India
13. South Korea
14. Mexico

  

While the European Union is not a country, it does have economic clout and so I added it to the list and collected data on its 27 member countries.  Including the EU gave us 15 “countries” in the study.

Labor market data for this exercise was provided by the International Labour Organization which has 2005 workforce by age demographics for all countries, but India and China.  Therefore, these countries were excluded from the analysis, bringing the total number of countries to 13.

The analysis revealed that 55 and older workers make-up about 14% of the workforce, in the 13 countries on average.  By comparison, the same figure is 16% for the US. [data table] 

Of the 13 countries, two jumped-out.  Japan, because 26% of its workforce is 55 and older, and Russia, because less than 10% of its workforce is 55 and older.

Here is the link to Part 2