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A Tale of Two Islands
Like ourselves, Jersey has a demographic problem
As the Isle of Man is looking towards growing the population to 100,000 by 2037, Jersey is trying to stop its population needing to reach 150,000 by 2040.
A report published today by the Jersey government highlights the island’s need to rebalance its population.
Like ourselves, Jersey has a demographic problem in that a sizeable portion of its population is inching towards retirement, but the younger generation isn’t coming through to fill jobs.
While Jersey already has a population of over 103,000 and is smaller than the Isle of Man, it is actively looking at keeping its population growth as low as possible and betting the house on highly productive sectors.
Releasing its report, the Jersey gov said: ‘Economic growth would have fallen in recent years were it not for ongoing inward migration and the report estimates that, under current economic conditions, a hypothetical ‘2040 scenario Jersey’ would require a population of around 150,000 just to maintain current standards of living.
‘Ministers have made it clear that they will not accept this situation and are setting out positive actions to address this challenge.’
Jersey’s Council of Ministers’ policy direction is to support economic growth both through increasing productivity in existing sectors and ‘developing new, highly productive sectors’ which it hopes will ‘help to maintain the 2040 population level well below the 150,000 level’.
Manx Solutions for Manx Problems
Facing our own problems with demographic imbalance, the Isle of Man needs to work out how to fund future health and social care, as well as preventing an unsustainable increasing tax burden on younger workers, which Chief Minister Alf Cannan said would lead to ‘gradual decline’ if it wasn’t addressed.
In response to this, the gov is working to ‘develop the infrastructure and services for our community to plan for an estimated population of 100,000 by 2037’.
Admittedly this was a climb down from its earlier plan to just outright say it wanted to grow the population to 100,000 by 2037, as was included in earlier drafts of the Economic Strategy.
Here, the plan is much more targeted at inward immigration to solve these problems, as well as improving the island’s offering to young workers.
Jersey meanwhile says it is looking to use technology other economic sectors to ‘significantly reduce the need for inward migration’.
