China will continue to have an abundant labour force for decades to come even though its quality requires improvement, a senior Chinese official said today, dismissing concerns over the country's declining work force due to rapidly growing old age population.
China's labour force was one billion last year, which is expected to slip to 958 million in 2030, saidWang Peian, deputy head of the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC).
China has scrapped the three and half decade old one child policy from this year, allowing couples to have two children which was largely attributed to rapidly ageing population.
According to Wang,the labour force is estimated at around 827 million for 2050, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Therefore, the challenge for the nation in the next few decades lies not in the size of the labour force but in its quality, Wang said.
Wang highlighted the nation's need to allow all couples to have two children.
The new family planning law took effect from January 1.
The timing for the new policy is good, considering the trend of a declining labor force and rising demographic dependency ratio, which rose from 34.2 in 2010 to 36.2 in 2014, Wang said.
He also said the number of child-bearing women has dropped from the peak of 380 million in 2011.
The UN has predicted that people aged over 65 will account for 18 per cent of China's population by 2030 - double the number in 2011 which will have a negative bearing on the Communist country's labour availability.
By 2050, China is expected to have nearly 500 million people over 60, exceeding the population of the US.
According to China's national bureau of statistics, the number of workers between the age of 15 and 59 decreased by 3.45 million year-on-year in 2012, making the first "absolute decrease" in China's labour force in decades.
