Catherwood LibraryILR School

In a report released last week, the nonpartisan Aspen Institute revealed that shifting workforce demographics in America may intensify income polarization and retard national economic growth over the next two decades. Decreasing fertility rates, an increase in the number of non-native workers relative to native workers, and slower growth in higher education participation rates will lead to a distinctly bifurcated labor market in which there is a glut of low-skilled labor and a shortage of professional and high-skilled labor. The overall effect of these changes on the economy will be to slow growth in gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as one percent per year, threatening up to thirty percent of annual economic growth unless the government takes action to increase worker education and training in order to maintain productivity.