In Europe, the population aged 20 to 64 is projected to decline by 49 million by 2050 compared to 2015, according to demographic projections cross-referenced with Eurostat data and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. The JRC estimates that convergence toward Swedish participation rates by age, sex, and education level would limit the decline to 2.8 percentage points between 2025 and 2070. Demographics set the constraints; policy choices determine the scale of contraction.
The essentials
- In Europe, the population aged 20 to 64 is projected to decline by 49 million by 2050 compared to 2015 (European Commission, JRC).
- The heaviest losses affect the East: Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania are among the countries most affected by the decline in their potential active population.
- The EU’s old-age dependency ratio, defined by Eurostat as people aged 65 and over per 100 people aged 15 to 64, was 33.0 in 2022 and is projected at 52.6% in 2060 for the EU-27; the total dependency ratio (children-youth and elderly combined) was projected at 53.0%.
- If all countries converged toward Swedish participation rates, the overall decline would fall to 2.8 percentage points by 2070: differences between scenarios result from different assumptions about participation, education, and migration; some scenarios illustrate the potential of activating women and older workers.
- Three levers make the difference: accessible childcare, progressive retirement, and continuous training for people over 50.
Forty-nine million people who will not work
Let us start with the order of magnitude. Forty-nine million is roughly the combined active population of Spain and the Netherlands. According to the JRC, the static scenario implies approximately 42.8 million fewer economically active people in the EU between 2025 and 2070.
The shock is not uniform. Sweden, Luxembourg, and Ireland maintain their workforce through sustained immigration and less depressed birth rates. Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania are among the countries most affected by the decline in their potential active population aged 20-64. These countries are affected to varying degrees by low fertility, migration, and their demographic structure; participation gaps vary by age and sex and deserve differentiated analysis.
The problem is therefore both demographic and institutional.
The gap between Sweden and Poland
Sweden has one of Europe’s highest labor market participation rates for women and for workers aged 55 to 64. This result stems from policies built over several decades: parental leave shareable between both parents, universal subsidized early childhood care from age one, work-time flexibility for seniors, progressive retirement systems that allow people to reduce their activity without cutting it off abruptly.
Poland presents a different picture. In 2024, the activity rate of Polish women aged 25 to 54 was 84.6%, above the OECD average of 76.2%. The activity rates of 30-45 year-olds require explicit comparison with other countries to establish a significant gap. That of 60-64 year-olds remains low, partly because incentives to remain employed are weaker than in Scandinavia. The observed gap is compatible with different activation potential, but its institutional cause cannot be established by this simulation.
The JRC estimates that convergence toward Swedish rates would reduce the decline to 5.9 million people, or 2.8 percentage points by 2070. The Swedish scenario suggests that widespread activation of women, seniors, and low-skilled workers could nearly offset the projected decline.
The dependency ratio, and why it does not tell the whole story
The ratio between inactive and active people is the measure economists look at first. Eurostat recorded an old-age dependency ratio of 33.0 people aged 65 or over per 100 people aged 15 to 64 in the EU in 2022, projected at 52.6% in 2060 for the EU-27. A higher dependency ratio can increase potential pressure on the working-age population to finance pensions, health care, and social assistance, without implying that each active person will mechanically bear a heavier burden.
This ratio measures a relationship between two flows: the number of employed people and the number of beneficiaries of social transfers. Both are changeable. Increasing the employment rate of women aged 25 to 54, postponing the effective retirement age by two or three years, integrating more immigrant workers into skilled jobs: each of these choices improves the ratio without waiting for an unlikely increase in birth rates.
The ILO emphasizes that employment and participation can mitigate the financial effects of aging, while demographics remains a major determinant. Variations in women’s activity rates produce measurable effects on public finances.
Three policies that work and why they do not travel easily
The Swedish example is well documented. But Sweden is not the only laboratory. The Netherlands has built one of Europe’s highest participation rates with a different model: widespread part-time work for both parents, high density of subsidized private childcare centers, very flexible labor market. Germany caught up in a decade on female employment, notably after massive expansion of childcare slots from 2013 onward. Portugal raised its employment rate for seniors through pension reforms that made staying in work financially attractive.
These three cases show there are multiple paths, not a single model. But they share one condition: sustained political will over at least one term, initial public investments (childcare is expensive before it yields returns), and social acceptance of change, which is far from trivial.
In Poland and Romania, the obstacles to adopting the Nordic model are first cultural and institutional, before being financial. Public childcare for young children remains socially less valued than in Scandinavia. Pension systems were reformed under constraint rather than by anticipation, and reforms were often partially reversed after each political alternation.
In Italy, the social protection system concentrates its resources on pensions and leaves little room for active employment policies for women and young people, an architecture inherited from the 1970s that every government promises to reform and that almost none actually do.
Institutional and cultural obstacles partially explain the gap between countries.
Decisions to make before 2030 for 2050
Timing matters. People who will be 55 in 2035 are already born. Their education level, health status, and access to occupational retraining depend on choices made in the next ten years. A continuous training policy launched in 2026 begins to produce measurable effects around 2030. A childcare system reform produces its first dividends on female employment rates five to eight years after rollout.
Political time is short; demographic time is long.
Two scenarios are taking shape for 2050, though it is not possible to assign precise figures to each for lack of projections at that horizon. In the first, Central and Eastern European countries remain on their current trajectory. They lose a significant share of their potential workforce, see their dependency ratio climb well above the European average, and partly compensate through immigration from third countries, with the political tensions that generates. In the second, several of them undertake childcare, progressive retirement, and training reforms for the over-50s in the 2020s and 2030s. Their labor force decline remains significant, demographics does not disappear, but could be mitigated.
What would allow distinguishing between the two trajectories before 2030 is observable right now: the budgets devoted to childcare and early childhood education in the countries concerned, the pension reforms that do or do not create clear incentives to remain employed, and investments in occupational training for workers over 50. These three signals are reliable leading indicators. Poland, for example, launched in 2022 a program to expand public childcare: its real scope and long-term financing will show which trajectory the country is pursuing.
The migration question also deserves to be asked frankly. Immigration has maintained workforce levels in Sweden, Ireland, and Luxembourg. It cannot, by itself, compensate for deficits of tens of millions of workers across the entire EU, especially in a political context where the acceptability of mass immigration remains low in several member states. The migration response is part of the solution; it does not spare labor market reforms.
Employment policies for immigrant workers already present deserve their own attention. A large share of immigrants work below their qualification level in Europe, notably due to non-recognition of foreign credentials and language barriers. Improving their occupational integration can help mitigate the effects of aging on public finances, according to the OECD/ILO report, a dynamic found in other contexts where workers’ initial training determines the actual absorption of productivity gains.
Collective action by Europe
The EU can support and complement member state action on social protection, but states retain definition of the fundamental principles of their pension and childcare systems. But it has several indirect levers.
The European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) finances vocational training programs across the EU. Its effectiveness depends on member states’ ability to design ambitious programs and evaluate them rigorously, two conditions unequally met. The European Commission has repeatedly recommended to Poland, Romania, and Italy that they increase their childcare spending. The recommendations exist; their implementation remains national.
The European Semester, the annual cycle of economic coordination between the Commission and member states, could be a stronger vector for convergence on these policies. But its coercive power is limited. Countries that ignore recommendations face no automatic sanction as long as they meet their budget objectives.
Europe can facilitate worker mobility between member states, harmonize qualification recognition, and finance comparative research on what works. Housing remains often underestimated constraint: a qualified Polish worker who would accept a job in Germany hesitates when German rents consume too large a share of her salary.
Romania and Italy show visible margins to increase female working-age participation, with activity rates for women aged 25 to 54 of 72.7% and 70.1% respectively in 2024; Bulgaria and Poland already show rates close to 85%. These four countries remain faced with deep institutional obstacles and constrained public investment capacity in social policies. The gap between what Sweden has accomplished and what these countries do today documents a resistance that can be explained and that could, if political choices allow, be reduced.
Sources
- Bruegel Policy Brief No. 13, 2025, Labor Force and Aging in Europe
- European Commission / Joint Research Centre (JRC), Reports on demographic projections and employment in Europe (no guaranteed URL)
- International Labour Organization (ILO), Reports on employment in Europe and Central Asia (no guaranteed URL)
- Eurostat, Statistics on activity rates by age and sex in EU27 (no guaranteed URL)
