Developed countries are going to face staff deficiency

The experts from George Washington University draw attention to the decrease in the growth rate of economically active population of the USA.

Beginning from 2010 there will be observed mass retiring of people who were born in the post-war birth rate boom years. However, deficiency of the staff will not be fully compensated since not enough young people will reach their working age by this time. In such conditions the USA will not be able to increase gross national product, even with the growth of labour productivity. The problems concerning financing social security system and free-of-charge medical aid will aggravate. A need for extra inflows of immigrants will arise. Nowadays approximately 1 million legal and 275 thousand illegal immigrants from other countries drive into the country annually. If these figures remain the same, the number of people at the working age will increase not by 1% per year (such growth was typical for the last decade), but only by 0.9%. In 2010-2030 this parameter will decrease to 0.2% per year, and without inflow of fresh forces from abroad the labour market will be annually reduced by 0.5%.

In a number of other developed countries the situation is even more difficult. According to IBRD calculations, the fertile factor in the rich states is approximately 19% lower than the level necessary for simple reproduction of the population. In Ireland this index is decreasing especially fast. In Japan it is already lower than in all the developed states on average. This country does not encourage immigration; therefore the number of population in the working age has been reducing since 1995 in the conditions of the insufficient birth rate. Among the countries with a high level of income per capita only in Israel the fertile factor is sufficient to provide the expanded reproduction of the population for a long period of time. In some years, the experts from the above mentioned university think, developed states will have to compete for the qualified personnel from abroad to ensure normal functioning of national economy. In such market conditions the Service of immigration and naturalization in the USA will most likely become the division of the Labor department since the immigration policy will be subordinated to the policy of the optimal labour market regulation.