Impact of Education Expansion and Pension Reforms on Labour Force Participation. Participation Rate and Labour Force Projections until 2030

The Austrian population will continue to grow over the next decades. At the same time the number of working age people is projected to decline until 2030. How this demographic change will translate into changes in the total number of people in the labour force (employed plus unemployed people) depends mainly on their labour market attachment. This article analyses the development of labour force participation rates, explicitly accounting for changes in the education structure, long term trends in participation rates and recent tightenings in pension law. These factors are shown substantially to affect labour force participation rates. A reduction in the total number of people in the workforce until 2030 seems unlikely when accounting for these facts.