At a time of shrinking employment, the world's three largest economies are adding jobs in the same industry: health care and services for the elderly.
Employment data this week in the US and Germany are likely to show more job gains in health services even as manufacturers slice payrolls amid economic stagnation.
For now, providing for the aging is about the only source of new jobs, even as economists including Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warn that rising numbers of old people may become a drag on economic growth. Farms, factories and stores in Japan, Germany and the US pared workforces last year.
Companies and public agencies that provide health care and social services for the elderly, such as Tenet Healthcare Corp, the second-biggest US hospital chain, added workers to meet rising demand.
"It's very clear that old people consume health care at a much higher rate" than the young, said Paul S. Hewitt, an economist and director of the global aging initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. Aging populations are increasing demand for "everything from specialized medical technicians to low-tech workers who assist elderly people in their daily living."
Employment growth in services hasn't been enough to make up for declines in manufacturing jobs at companies such as NTN Corp, a Japanese maker of machinery and bearings. It plans to eliminate 700 jobs, or 9 percent of its domestic workforce, by May. Factory job cuts helped push Japan's jobless rate to a post-World War II record of 5.5 percent in January.
In Germany, unemployment last month held at 10.3 percent, the highest since November 1999, economists surveyed by Bloomberg News expect the government to report Thursday. Continued job-cutting by cost-conscious companies pushed the US unemployment rate to 5.8 percent in February from a four-month low of 5.7 percent in January, economists predict the Labor Department will say Friday.
As the US lost 1.6 million jobs over the last two years, employment in health services grew 5.6 percent, with hospitals, insurers, and medical offices adding 253,000 workers.
In Germany, employment in health-care services rose 2.5 percent to about 1.9 million in the first quarter of last year, the latest period for which data are available, from a year earlier.
Total employment, excluding low-wage jobs, fell 0.6 percent in that period, according to figures from the Federal Labor Office.
Japan's services industry, which includes nursing care, medical care and education, added 360,000 workers last year even as the second-largest economy lost 820,000 jobs.
The number of senior citizens in the three largest economies is projected to increase two-thirds by 2025, according to the UN. The US Senate Special Committee on Aging called Greenspan to testify on the topic last week to examine the effect of older workforces on everything from productivity to pensions to government programs.
"There is no doubt that while economists may not be terribly good in making long-term economic forecasts, demographers are extraordinarily accurate in making forecasts of what the population will look like 10 and 15 years ahead,'' he said.
Within two decades, almost one in four residents of Germany, Europe's biggest economy, will be over the age of 65. Even as the population falls, the number of elderly Germans will jump 47 percent by 2025, according to UN projections.
"The growth of senior care in the next 30 to 50 years will be above average, and we can profit from this," said Luthar Reiche, head of investor relations at Maternus-Kliniken AG, a German nursing-home operator. The company added 120 jobs in the past year as it took over nursing homes.
Over the past four years, employment in health-care services has increased 7.9 percent, compared with a rise of just 2.3 percent in overall employment.
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