5 ways Canada's workforce will change in 20 years

[pampango]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2011/08/17/labour-force-trends.html?ref=rss

Here's the outlook:

- After expanding by about four per cent a year in the past, the labour force growth rate will slow to less than one per cent a year by 2031.
- The workforce is going to get a lot older. In 2001, when the first batch of baby boomers turned 55, only one in 10 Canadian workers was at least that age. By 2031, Statistics Canada expects that ratio to jump to almost one in four.
- In 1981, there were roughly six people in the labour force for each retiree. By 2031, 50 years later, that ratio will have declined to fewer than three to one.
- Twenty years ago, fewer than one in five Canadian workers were born in a different country. By 2031, that ratio is expected to rise to one in three.
- In 1996, one in 10 Canadian workers was a member of a so-called visible minority. By 2031, that's expected to be more like one in three. And even if immigration stopped completely from this point on, the percentage of Canadian workers who are a member of a visible minority would still be more than one in five by 2031.

Canada's statistics agency projected 20 years into the future based on a number of different projections and assumptions. Though the final numbers changed a little, the trend was the same in all cases. "The projections also that … the labour force will become older and increasingly ethnoculturally diverse," as the agency put it.

The agency cites demographic trends to explain the changes. Specifically, baby boomers will age and exit the workforce, and an increasing percentage of those who will replace them will be immigrants.

[StarsInHerHair]

1. part of the increase is the Baby Boomers, it's what happens when you get too

big, they knew this-didn't the Boomer's Parents have a plan to deal with it? It's the same in alot of countries. Wholesale pricing, rent controls, etc. unless they want to see old people homeless, going hungry, etc. There has to be a good way to absorb the generation difference; Millenials equal the Boomers in size, pretty much.