WSJ: Gray Wave Bolstering Global Economy

A gray wave in the global workforce is just what the economy needed, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“You need more people, a greater share of the population to join the labor force, so you can produce the same amount of output,” Petia Topalova, an International Monetary Fund economist, told the Journal.

“It’s very much needed for most of these countries because populations are projected to decline in most of the advanced world over the next decade.”

According to the Journal, labor-force participation — the share of people working or looking for work — for people aged 55 to 64 started climbing throughout advanced economies around the turn of the century, reversing decades of decline. 

And by around 2010, participation by people age 65 and over began an upward march, reaching a near half-century high of 15.3% in the developed world last year.

Though rising workforce participation by itself isn’t enough to offset the drag from aging populations in coming decades, particularly in Japan and Germany, the Journal reported Japan continues to defy the economic odds.

n 2018, 77% of Japanese aged 55 to 64 were in the labor force, up from 68.2% in 2011. 

“If other countries follow Japan’s pathway, then there’s still scope for employment rates to rise quite considerably, even from their current high levels,” Mark Keese, an OECD employment economist, told the Journal.

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