The European Union is approaching the limit of its population growth and will enter a sustained demographic 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, when it reaches 453.3 million, before beginning a decline that will not stop.
By 2050 the number will fall to 445 million and by the end of the century to 398.8 million, comparable to levels seen in the second half of the 1970s.
This 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.
That greater longevity is changing the age structure of the bloc. Today, 1 in 5 Europeans is 65 or older; by 2050 that share will rise to 1 in 3. In absolute terms, those who will require care are projected to increase from 36 million this year to 48 million in 2070, equivalent to 11% of the total population.
This rise in dependency will weigh on a shrinking workforce. The 15-to-64 age group is expected to decline at a rate of 1.2 million people per year between 2025 and 2050, while about 20% of those of working age remain outside the labor market, including eight million young people who are not in education, employment, or training.
The employment gap between women and men remains at 10 percentage points. Still, participation among older workers has grown: the share of employees aged 55 to 64 increased by 13.5 percentage points among women and by 12.2 among men over the past decade.
Faced with this outlook, the European Commission acknowledges that migration “plays an increasingly important role” in partially offsetting the decline in the labor force, although it warns that migration alone cannot reverse the trend. Attracting skilled migrants, along with training and reskilling programs for those already living in the bloc, are among the measures considered, as are improving productivity and reducing unemployment.
Nevertheless, aging also creates 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 projected to grow in the coming decades.
(With information from AFP and DPA)