Northern Europe’s Japan

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by: Dick Stroud

There is an article in today’s FT titled: Baby boom retirement aftershock looms. The FT is a subscription service but you will be able to access it for the next couple of days.

Finland is on the leading edge of Europe's demographic shock.

Between 2005 and 2020 an estimated 900,000 baby boomers are set to leave the workforce (40% of the total). The over-65s will be a quarter of the population. Go forward another decade and the over-65s will increase 70% while the working age population will fall 10%.

If you are an international marketer and want to look at a microcosm of what will befall the rest of Europe and want somewhere to test your ‘ultra-old’ marketing strategies then Finland is the place.

How the Finnish economy is going to survive such a dramatic change to the profile of its workforce is another question.

Original post: http://www.20plus30.com/blog/2007/09/northern-europes-japan.html