Ideas: The Work Force is Global

Globalization is occurring at the same time as developing countries are experiencing an unprecedented surge in their working-age populations. Meanwhile, the world's developed countries are experiencing slowing rates of population growth, even population declines in a few.

In the past, massive emigration resolved imbalances between labor supply and labor demand in different nations. Emigration is still a solution for many poor people in developing countries, but the numbers of job-needy workers are far larger than the industrialized nations are willing to absorb. Instead, globalization is allowing them to export employers.

As developing countries modernize, their population growth rates will become more similar to rates in the industrialized countries. These rates differ according to countries' willingness to accommodate cultural change. The US, generally the most adaptable nation, has relatively robust population growth. In contrast, countries like Japan and Austria have been unwilling to modify traditions and practices to ease parents' work/family conflicts, or to accept significant numbers of immigrants.

Meanwhile, educational improvements combined with population growth are shifting the bulk of the world’s educated working-age population to less-developed countries. New estimates from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, an international think-tank based in Austria, suggest that the industrialized countries’ share of the world’s
population with a secondary education will drop from a third in 2000 to a fourth in 2030.

If the rest of the world mimics U.S. educational patterns by 2030, industrial nations’ share of the world’s college-educated population will drop from 52 percent in 2000 to 30 percent. With no additional improvements, industrial countries’ share will still decline, to 46 percent.