Barclays analyst Michael Gavin said in a research note this week that women are replacing men economically, and this is a good thing. Global growth will also slow because the working age population in some of the key centres for economic activity is falling, he says.
In some cases, like in Japan, Barclays said that more women and old people entering the workforce is mitigating some of the economic damage from dwindling labour market participation from men:
The working age population of the existing centers of global economic activity has stopped rising and begun to fall. All else equal (including in particular productivity growth and labor force participation), the implied slowdown in the global labor force could subtract a full percentage point from trend growth in the coming decade and a half, compared with the past 15 years.
But the effect of shrinking (and aging) populations on the global workforce could be mitigated by labor force participation of workers beyond the conventional working age (15-64) and by increased participation rates of the working age population. In the past decade, precisely this has happened in Japan and Germany, substantially mitigating the demographic shock.
Take a look at these charts. Effectively, more women of the "prime working age" bracket are joining the labour market, while more men in this category are leaving it. This in turn is helping stop the "demographic shock" that Barclays is talking about:
