The European Union is nearing the limit of its population growth and is expected to enter a sustained population decline for the remainder of the century, according to a report published Tuesday by the European Commission.
According to the Joint Research Centre (JRC), an agency attached to the institution, the bloc currently has 450.6 million inhabitants and will reach its peak in 2029 at 453.3 million, after which it will begin an ongoing decline.
By 2050 the population is projected to fall to 445 million and by the end of the century to 398.8 million, a level comparable to the second half of the 1970s.
That contraction, equivalent to an 11.7% loss from the projected peak, will occur alongside an apparently contradictory trend: Europeans are living longer than ever. Average life expectancy was 81.5 years in 2024 — 84.1 for women and 78.9 for men — and the report projects that by 2100 it will exceed 90 and 86 years respectively. A child born in the EU in 2023 can expect 75.3 years free of serious illness.
This increased longevity is changing the bloc’s age profile. Today one in five Europeans is 65 or older; by 2050 that proportion is expected to rise to one in three. In absolute terms, the number of people needing care is projected to grow from 36 million this year to 48 million in 2070, equivalent to 11% of the total population.
That growing dependency will fall on a shrinking workforce. The 15-to-64 age group is expected to decline by about 1.2 million people per year between 2025 and 2050, while roughly 20% of those of working age remain outside the labor market, including eight million young people who are neither studying, working, nor in training.
The employment gap between women and men remains around ten percentage points. Still, participation among older workers has increased: the employment rate for people aged 55 to 64 rose by 13.5 percentage points among women and 12.2 among men over the last decade.
In this context, the European Commission acknowledges that migration “plays an increasingly important role” in partially offsetting the decline in the active population, but it warns that migration alone cannot reverse the trend. Attracting skilled migrants, alongside training and reskilling programs for current residents, improving productivity, and reducing unemployment are among the measures under consideration.
At the same time, aging presents opportunities in the so‐called silver economy — a sector focused on products and services for older adults, with innovations in health and technology — for which demand is expected to grow in the coming decades.
(With information from AFP and DPA)