Germany,
Japan add jobs for elderly care
By BLOOMBERG
Taipei Times, March 04,
2003
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. |