Bestselling author discusses economics of immigration, population declines

Veteran journalist John Ibbitson said the pandemic caused disruptions around the world, including revealing just how fragile global labor markets are.

Ibbitson, a writer at large at Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, co-authored the book “Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline” along with Darrell Bricker. The 2019 book argues that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political and economic landscapes.

“In Canada, our immigration point system [which was invented in the 1960s] was designed to bring in doctors, engineers, software people, entrepreneurs and others who we thought would fill in the job shortages,” Ibbitson said Wednesday during his keynote presentation to open the second day of the FreightWaves F3: Future of Freight Festival in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

“The pandemic revealed to [Canada] the same thing that it revealed to the [United States] — its agricultural workers, people harvesting our crops, personal support workers, long-term care workers, truckers, construction workers — these are where the shortages suddenly loomed, when we were forced to close our doors because of the pandemic.”

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