By: Dwight Links
One in four people in the world live in a country that has seen its population already peak, painting a bleak picture for the future workforce.
The latest report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) on the global population workforce indicates that population thresholds have been reached in various parts of the world.
“Global fertility rates are declining. The human population is projected to reach its crest within the century and then to fall (UN DESA, 2024). One in four people currently live in a country where the population size is estimated to have already peaked,” the 2025 report outlines on world population birth rate analyses.
The UN agency indicates that a shift in world dynamics is expected.
“The result will be societies as we have never seen them before: communities with larger proportions of older persons, smaller shares of young people, and, possibly, smaller workforces,” the report adds.
The report also recommends that policymakers shift from alarmist tendencies and approach birthrate planning with real-world analysis, helping meet the demands of population dynamics.
“Conversations, policies and solutions must shift away from alarmism over ‘population explosion’ and ‘population collapse’ towards the real-world concerns of individuals making profoundly consequential, deeply intimate choices about their bodies, families and futures,” the report notes.
According to the UNFPA, this crisis is not rooted in individual reproductive decisions which fail to align with the needs of a state or economy.
“Rather it is a crisis rooted in environments and policy choices that are misaligned with the desires of individuals, which have failed to create the economic security and personal empowerment that people say are preconditions for realising their family formation goals – whether that goal is to have many children, few children or none at all,” the agency reports.
FERTILITY CRISIS
Many of the people surveyed in the different nations from across every region indicated that they have either not planned for their current childbirth, or cannot have children due to affordability constraints.
“Original research by the UNFPA finds that very high proportions of men and women – in every country surveyed, in every region of the world – are unable to realise their fertility aspirations,” the report adds.
This translates to the desired birth rates mismatching with the fertility aspirations of communities globally.
“Rates of unintended pregnancy are persistently high across regions, as are difficulties having the number of children respondents desire. Both overachieved fertility aspirations, in which people have more children than they believe ideal, and underachieved fertility aspirations,” the agency indicates.
But, these are not the only trends occurring, as several nations have varying experiences of population flows.
“In fact, our current world is one of great demographic diversity – some countries continue to experience high fertility rates while others have declining fertility. For example, some have high rates of immigration, others high rates of emigration,” concludes the report.
