Global worker migration patterns will inevitably shift

The global labour market is in the midst of a gradual but significant transformation. Driven by a dramatic collapse in birth rates, impeded globalization, changes in the capital intensity of growth, a preference shift towards fewer work hours, initial use cases of artificial intelligence and societal angst over immigration, labour market dislocations have already begun and are only about to go further out-of-whack with time. According to a recent report from the United Nations Population Division, of eight world regions, Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, Europe and Northern America, Australia and New Zealand, and Latin America and the Caribbean had the highest proportions of working-age people aged 25-to-64 years in 2022, accounting for 56%, 54%, 53% and 51% of their total population, respectively. The implication of these dramatic changes in birth rates and in age bulge of populations is that the very structure of national and international labour markets is likely to undergo massive changes. In the post-pandemic world, with a dramatic shift in the supply-chain architecture, a preference for fewer hours of weekly work, changes in labour-force participation and geopolitics-led trade in goods and services, labour markets are tight in developed countries.