patrick.net

Here's a chart I like to make about population pyramids . . . you can easily compare certain years since the additive blend of their year cohorts turns gray thanks to the bar being complementary colors.

With this chart solid color is new additions to each 5 year group, 2020 vs 2003.

Eg. in 2020 we will have about 3 million more people age 80+ in 2020 compared to 2003.

You can really see the baby boom hit the 55-75 bins, too. Roughly 18M more people up there by 2020.

This is the demographic trend we're looking at. Inflation is not going to solve it.

Curiously, people in their 40s will fall by 4M people in 2020. I don't know what this means.

fwiw, here's the Japanese comparison, 2003 vs 2020:

It's kinda unclear but other than the seniors, only the 40-49 cohort is larger in 2020 than 2003.

The age 25-35 cohort is going to be missing ~8 million people!

I don't know if the Japanese pyramid is a lot worse or a lot better than ours.

The number of old people 80+ doubling from 5.5M to 11M is something, but I don't see why their unemployment problem won't go away later this decade.

Except for people in industries that cater to young adults I guess. That cohort is just disappearing.

Troy,

The charts are interesting.

When I look at it [and make the assumption that boomers will be retiring at "normal" ages], it appears that we will be removing far more people from the labor force than we are adding. (The yellow part of the 65-69 bar is much larger than the blue part of the 20-24 bar)....so, with time, our unemployment situation will get some help, I imagine. I think Japan is going to be hurting pretty bad over the next 3 decades or so -- especially if people just keep getting older instead of dying. :)