TurnRightTurnLeft, I don't believe we have a desperate skills shortage if the IT industry experience is anything to go by. See http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7120#108473 for details as to how IT skilled shortages are manufactured. My lawn mower man used to be a bank manager, other ex-bank managers drive buses.

According to ABS about
- 5% of the workforce is unemployed http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs%40.nsf/mf/6202.0
10% of the workforce is underemployed, casualised workers http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/6105.0Main%20Features3Apr%202008?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=6105.0&issue=Apr%202008&num=&view=
- as well as a very low workforce participation rate of 65% http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs%40.nsf/mf/6202.0.

So in the future we will probably have enough people to look after our frail elderly if we work smarter and lose some of those low paid service or unproductive middle management jobs. Statistically most Australians enjoy good health until the last 7 years of life and spend half the money spent on health care in the last 2 years of their life. Life expectancy for men is 81 and women is 84.

TRTL,

Only 13 countries actually have declining populations. Apart from Germany, all of them are in Eastern Europe. Birth rates in most of these countries are going up again, although are still below replacement level. It can take up to 70 years for below replacement rate fertility to translate into a declining population, because of momentum from past high fertility, even if there is no net immigration, and some Western European countries have a lot of it. Here in Australia, from ABS figures, approximately 2 babies are born and more than one net migrant arrives for every death. We are hardly running out of people.

The skill shortages are largely the fault of business and government. Back in the late 1990s it was reported that there were no more apprenticeships on offer than in 1979, despite population growth. Why put up with an apprentice, when you can get a prime age migrant who has already been trained at someone else's expense? Like Billie, I am dubious about the extent of the problem. When something is in short supply, normally the price goes up, just as bananas went to $12/kg after Cyclone Larry. Why have wages been so stagnant in comparison to profits? Instead of more immigration, I would like to see more streamlined training offered to some of our own people who have been excluded. And yes, some businesses might have to live with their decision not to train.

Older people could also do a lot more work, if necessary. Before Britain introduced compulsory retirement at 65 in the 1920s (as a reponse to unemployment), three quarters of the men between 65 and 70 were still working and nearly half the men between 70 and 75. The baby boomers have had better diet, smaller families, and better health care, living conditions, and working conditions than their 19th century ancestors. Of the top 10 countries on the World Economic Forum Competitiveness Index (which don't include Australia), 8 of them either have no population growth or growth rates than are less than half of ours.

The IT so-called 'skills shortage' issue is very close to home for me.

Most employers and employment agencies are too bone lazy to make the effort to find a role for IT workers who don't fit their usual formula which usually comprises at least two years' professional experience in whatever the nominated 'in technology' is and a tertiary qualification.

They would rather import people who formally meet these requirements whilst leaving many others with often having vastly broader experience, credentials and skills languishing in low-paid semi-skilled or unskilled occupations as billie has shown.

It is bewildering that so may, who should know better, choose to parrot this nonsense about the 'skills shortages', oblivious to the harm that they are helping to cause to their fellow native-born Australians.

The idea of immigration solving the grey catastrophe has problems other than the exponential growth monster. For starters, you must take it on faith that there will be a catastrophe, and that no technical progress will alleviate it. You must also convince yourself that despite the fact that there are countries with an age profile decades in advance of Australia's, the problem is so dire that it must be acted on immediately. The idea that there is ample time to develop a better understanding of the problem by observing these countries must be dispelled.

The other problem is the consideration of the harm inflicted on the countries left. It might be argued that the countries benefit from the money sent back home by the migrants. But would anyone argue that to send all skilled workers here overseas would be beneficial because of the money they might send back?

The best means of alleviating population pressures is to assist development via technical progress and assistance. Poaching skilled workers from developing countries, cutting back on education, and stifling research incentives would not seem to support this end.

By 2025 nearly one-third of the European population will be collecting pensions.Europe's population is expected to decrease from 728 million now to 658 million by 2050,
Due to its one-child policy, China's number of elderly people may triple from 130 million to 400 million over the next five years.
Joseph Chamie, director of the UN Population Division, reported estimates that already 10% of global population is aged 60 or more and that this share will mount to 22%, or about 2 billion people, by 2050.
The total fertility rate - number of children per woman) in India would is expected to come down to 2.52 between 2011 and 2016, and is expected to reach 2.1 in 2026. global fertility rates have declined more rapidly than expected. In 1960, 70 per cent of the global population lived in less-developed regions. By late 1999, the less-developed regions had grown to comprise 80 per cent. Of the projected growth of the world population by 2025, 98 per cent will occur in these regions. The world’s urban population is growing by 60 million a year, about three times the increase in the rural population.
"The scarcity of exhaustible resources is at most a minor constraint on economic growth...the
concern about the impact of rapid population growth on resource exhaustion has often been exaggerated."People create more resources of all kinds. Ten thousand years ago, only 4 million could keep themselves alive. Now, 6 billion people are living longer and more healthily than ever before.

ASymeonakis wrote: "the concern about the impact of rapid population growth on resource exhaustion has often been exaggerated"

Roughly half of the world's supply of petroleum has already been consumed in roughly 150 years. The remainder is expected to be exhausted completely in 30 years. Long before it is exhausted the actual rate of extraction of petroleum is expected to decline sharply causing world wide scarcity, which apart from limiting our ability to travel and manufacture all sorts of products upon which we have come to depend upon, will also cause food production to decline. What, if not the explosive growth in population since 1850 do you believe has been the principle cause of the exhaustion of this non-renewable resource which took biological and geological process many tens of millions of years to accumulate, if not the explosive growth in population?

Perhaps you should ponder the graph of human population growth at http://www.elephantcare.org/IMAGES/CONSERVE/popchart.jpg linked to from http://www.elephantcare.org/conserve.htm On the graph it states:

"Since 1950, we have consumed more resources than in all of previous history combined."

Once we have exhausted all of our natural capital, I think we will learn that it will be a lot harder than you imagine to go on 'creating' resources anywhere near the same rate that we have in recent years.