Bridging the generation gap and today’s age work changes
A new Australian study ‘Bridging the Gap’ – undertaken by leading Australian analyst Mark McCrindle – has found that the Australian population is now older, slower, smaller, more casual and more global.
The population is slower because the growth is projected to slow down even further during the next 50 years from 1% a year now to 0.2% a year by 2040. It is older because in 1976 the median age was 28 compared to 37 today and in a decade it will be over 40.
It is smaller because the working age of Australia’s population is in decline as a proportion of the total population. Now 66% of the total population is aged 15-64 years but by 2050 it will be just 57%.
It will be more global because there are now 20,000 fewer men than women in their 30s in Australia which is attributed to the globalisation of work drawing men overseas. And over 30% of the total workforce is employed on a casual basis.
The report also found that the length of time workers spent with one employer had dropped dramatically in the past four decades. In 1960 employees averaged 15 years with one employer. Today the average single employer working period has fallen to just four years.
The report’s author, Mark McCrindle, said that “occasionally in history rapid technological change combines with massive demographic change and with one generation society altogether alters. Today we are living in one such era”.
