Countries Whose Populations Are Shrinking, and What They Changed

Several high income countries now record more deaths than births, and their working age populations are contracting even where total population is held up temporarily by migration. Japan, South Korea, Italy, Germany, Spain, Taiwan and much of central and eastern Europe are the clearest cases. Some of them responded by opening or widening work routes for foreign workers. Japan created a designated sector status for workers in fields it named explicitly. Germany rebuilt its skilled immigration law in stages and added a points based job search permit. Spain reworked its immigration regulation and maintains a quarterly published list of occupations employers cannot fill. Taiwan built a self sponsored permit for people who meet published qualification criteria without needing an employer first. Italy sets multi year quotas for non seasonal work by government decree.

Other shrinking countries went the other way. Hungary narrowed foreign labour to a temporary, employer tied, nationality limited channel. Sweden raised the salary floor on work permits. Poland published a migration strategy that emphasised control. Even Canada, whose population growth has depended on immigration for years, cut its planned admission levels. Population decline creates labour scarcity. Domestic politics decides the response to it.

This post names what changed, who published it, and what a person outside these countries can actually check. Every route, list and threshold below is described as published at the time of writing and must be reconfirmed against the issuing authority before you act on it. This is general information, and a licensed adviser should confirm your own case.

Who this applies to

You are useful to a shrinking country if your occupation appears in the sectors it has named, and if you can document the qualification or experience the route requires in the format the authority accepts. That is a narrower group than "anyone with a degree" and a wider group than "senior specialists only". Several of these countries have opened at the technician, trade, care and hospitality level, because that is where their own workforce is thinning fastest.

If you are in a country where the queue of qualified candidates lengthens every year, this is the other half of the same picture. The abundance of your skill at home and its scarcity abroad are the two ends of one mechanism, which the hub piece on overpopulation and migration sets out in full. The practical question is whether your specific occupation reaches an open route, and the rest of this post is about answering it.

How the pressure actually works

A population starts shrinking long before anyone notices it in the labour market. Births fall below the replacement level for a sustained period. For two or three decades total population keeps rising anyway, because the large cohorts born earlier are still alive and still working. Then those cohorts reach retirement age at the same time that the smaller cohorts behind them enter the workforce, and the working age population turns down while the retired population climbs.

Employers feel this first in the occupations with the least substitutability: nursing and aged care, construction trades, heavy vehicle driving, food production, machine maintenance, and increasingly clinical and technical roles that require years of training. Those are the jobs a government cannot fill by retraining people quickly, because the training pipeline is itself constrained by the number of young people entering it.

Governments have four responses available, and most use several at once. They raise the retirement age. They fund pronatalist policy, which changes nothing for twenty years even when it works. They automate, which helps in manufacturing and helps very little in care. And they admit foreign workers. The fourth is the fastest acting and the most politically expensive, which is why responses across shrinking countries differ so much.

For the demographic mechanism in detail, see ageing populations and the reason skilled visa routes exist. For the country by country picture of where employers report unfilled vacancies, see countries with labour shortages.

What each country changed

The entries below name the authority that published each change. Treat them as a starting point for verification. Confirm current eligibility with the authority itself before acting.

Japan

Japan's Immigration Services Agency, under the Ministry of Justice, administers the Specified Skilled Worker status, introduced under legislation that took effect in 2019. It admits workers into a defined set of industrial fields designated by government decision, with entry conditions based on a skills evaluation test and a Japanese language test, or on completion of the technical intern training route. The designated fields have been added to since introduction, and the second, longer term category of the status was expanded to cover more fields in 2023.

Two things matter to a candidate. First, the field list is a government decision and it changes, so read the current designation on the Immigration Services Agency site before you sit any test. Second, the two categories of the status differ substantially in duration and in whether family accompaniment is permitted. Japan also runs a points assessed route for highly skilled professionals, which we cover in Japan's highly skilled professional points fast track.

South Korea

South Korea's demographic decline is among the steepest recorded in a developed economy, and the figures are published by Statistics Korea. Policy has moved on two tracks: an employment permit system for non professional workers, whose annual intake quota is set by government and administered through the Ministry of Employment and Labor, and professional categories in the E-7 family administered by the Korea Immigration Service under the Ministry of Justice.

The E-7 categories are employer tied, and the conditions attached to each sub category, including salary levels and the ratio of foreign to domestic employees a firm may hold, are set out in immigration guidelines that are revised. If you are considering Korea, the employer dependency is the risk to understand first, and we set it out in South Korea's E-7 route and the path to residency.

Germany

Germany's reform of the Skilled Immigration Act took effect in stages through late 2023 and 2024. The published changes included lowered salary thresholds for the EU Blue Card, widened access for people with vocational qualifications, and a points based permit that allows a qualified person to enter and look for work without an offer in hand. The Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Foreign Office publish the current conditions, the Federal Employment Agency publishes the shortage occupation analysis that underpins much of the labour market reasoning, and the ANABIN database is where a foreign degree is checked for recognition status.

Germany is the case where the vocational route matters most. A recognised trade qualification carries weight there that it does not carry in a purely academic points system, which is why trade recognition in Germany is worth reading before you assume your qualification transfers.

Italy

Italy's non seasonal and seasonal work entry quotas are set by decree, the decreto flussi, published by the Italian government and administered through the Ministry of the Interior with applications filed in defined windows. The government moved to multi year quota planning covering several years at once, with allocations broken out by sector and in some cases by nationality under bilateral arrangements. The quota is the binding constraint. Being qualified does not help if the window has closed or the sector allocation is exhausted, so the publication date and the application window are the two facts to check first.

Spain

Spain publishes a catalogue of occupations that are difficult to fill, maintained by the public employment service, and the immigration regulation governing work and residence was substantially reworked in a reform published in 2025 and administered by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration. The catalogue is updated on a recurring cycle and is occupation and province specific, which makes it one of the more granular published shortage signals in Europe. Read the current issue, not a summary of it.

Taiwan

Taiwan's National Development Council and Ministry of Labor administer arrangements under legislation for the recruitment and employment of foreign professionals, including a combined work and residence permit for people who meet published criteria in designated professional categories without needing an employer to sponsor them first. Taiwan's births have fallen sharply, and the policy direction has been to widen professional entry while keeping other categories controlled. Check the current qualifying criteria with the issuing authority, since the professional categories and the evidence accepted for each have been revised more than once.

Denmark

Denmark's Agency for International Recruitment and Integration publishes a positive list of occupations experiencing a shortage of qualified professionals, alongside a pay limit scheme that grants access based on salary level. The positive list is revised on a published cycle. Denmark is a useful illustration of two different logics operating at once: one route asks what you do, the other asks what you are paid.

Central and eastern Europe

Several countries in the region are shrinking through emigration as well as low birth rates, and the labour response has generally been work permits with annual quotas set by government decision, often with simplified procedures for named nationalities. Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and the Czech Republic have all used such mechanisms. They are administered nationally, the numbers move each year, and several have tightened. Verify with the interior or labour ministry of the specific country.

If you want to know which of these routes your own occupation reaches, that is exactly what the free assessment checks.

The countries where decline produced restriction

The uncomfortable half of this topic is that demographic pressure and political openness are separate variables.

Hungary's population has been declining for years, and its government has been explicit that it prefers family policy to immigration. Legislation passed in 2023 and in force from 2024 restructured foreign labour into a guest worker category with limited duration, employer tied conditions, and restrictions on which nationalities may use it. It was designed to supply labour without producing settlement.

Sweden, with an ageing workforce and documented shortages in health and care, raised the maintenance requirement for labour migrants in late 2023, a change administered by the Swedish Migration Agency, and further tightening has been under discussion since. Poland published a migration strategy in 2024 emphasising control of inflows. The Netherlands has moved politically toward restriction while its shortage indicators have stayed high.

Canada is the clearest recent example of a country that depended on immigration for population growth and then reduced it. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada publishes an annual Immigration Levels Plan, and the plan published in late 2024 lowered planned permanent resident admissions and set targets for temporary residents for the first time. Canada is still admitting large numbers by international standards. The direction changed, and anyone planning against Canada should read the current levels plan and the current category based selection announcements directly from IRCC.

Demographic need creates demand for workers, and domestic politics decides the shape of the response: permanent settlement, temporary rotation, or a narrowed door with a higher threshold. A shrinking population tells you a route is likely to exist. It says nothing about whether that route leads to permanent residence.

What to check

Here is how to read the signals that a country's decline has actually turned into a route you can use.

Two of these rows do most of the work. A route without a job offer requirement is the one you can act on alone. A route with a permanent residence path is the one worth spending years on. When both are true, the country has decided it wants people to stay.

The related discipline of reading the lists themselves matters here, because a list is a statement about what a government believed on the day it published. Occupations get removed. Assume nothing about the version you read a year ago.

What it costs

The recurring costs are set by the bodies that charge them and are quoted on their own pages: a language test, a credential recognition or equivalence assessment, professional registration or licensing examination where your field is regulated, police certificates from every country you have lived in, medical examinations, certified translations, and the government application fee itself. Add an adviser if you use one, and add travel to a test centre if there is none near you.

Two costs specific to these routes are worth planning for. Japan and Korea attach language requirements to significant categories, and reaching a working level is a multi year commitment with tuition attached. Germany, Italy and Spain attach recognition procedures to regulated occupations, which can require bridging courses or supervised practice with fees of their own. Build your budget from each body's current published schedule.

How long it takes

Plan in three blocks. The first is proving what you already are: language test, credential assessment, professional registration where it applies, and employment evidence in the format the authority accepts. This block is under your control and consistently takes longer than people expect, because assessing bodies queue and former employers are slow to write reference letters to specification.

The second block is the application itself, whose published processing time you can read on the authority's site and should treat as an average with a long tail. The third block is anything quota bound, where the clock runs on the next window opening rather than on any processing queue.

The trap across all three is expiry. Language tests, credential assessments, police certificates and medicals all lapse. A route with a long queue can force you to buy the same document twice. Sequence them so they stay valid through the decision.

When moving is the wrong answer

A shrinking population abroad does not automatically make emigration your best move. If your own sector is genuinely growing against your national trend, if you hold real leverage such as family capital or an equity stake, or if care obligations at home outweigh the earnings difference, staying can be the correct decision made deliberately.

Moving is also the wrong answer when the route you are looking at is temporary by design. A rotational guest worker permit in a country that has decided against settlement gives you a few years of higher earnings and returns you to the same position afterwards, minus the years. That can still be worth it. It should be chosen knowingly.

And it is the wrong answer when your occupation does not currently reach any open route. The honest response there is to fix the gap or change the target, and what to do when your occupation is not on the skilled list sets out the realistic options.

Common mistakes

Reading a shortage list as an invitation. A list says a government identified a gap. Eligibility still runs through qualification recognition, experience documentation, language, age where points apply, and often a quota.

Using last year's version. These documents are revised on published cycles. A stale copy is the single most common way people spend money on a test or assessment for a route that no longer includes their occupation.

Assuming decline means openness. Hungary and Sweden are the counterexamples. Check the actual policy direction, not the demographic direction.

Ignoring the family and settlement conditions. Two routes into the same country can differ entirely on whether your spouse may join you and whether your years count toward permanent residence. The sub category matters more than the country.

Chasing the country instead of the occupation. The productive order is to identify what your occupation qualifies for across several systems, then choose. Working the other way around produces years spent on a system that was never going to take your profile.

Believing a figure you cannot source. Population and shortage writing is full of confident numbers with no origin. If a claim about intake, quotas or vacancy counts does not name the body that published it, treat it as decoration.

What to do next

1. Write down your occupation as an employer would title it, plus your qualification level and years of documented experience.
2. Check that occupation against the current shortage or designation list of two or three shrinking countries, reading each list on the issuing authority's own site and noting its publication date.
3. For each match, open the specific permit page and record three things: whether a job offer is required, whether family may accompany you, and whether the permit leads to permanent residence.
4. Check whether a quota or application window applies, and when the next one opens.
5. Check what your qualification needs in order to be recognised in that country, and what the recognition body charges and how long it queues.
6. Sequence tests, assessments and certificates so they stay valid through the decision.
7. Reconfirm everything with the issuing authority before you pay for anything, and have a licensed adviser confirm your own case.

If you would rather have that assembled properly, take the free eligibility assessment first. It matches your occupation, qualifications, experience, age and language against the routes that are currently open. The personal migration roadmap is $499 if you want the full version, and the pricing page sets out what each tier includes, and if the honest answer is that no route currently fits your profile, we would rather tell you that at the start than after you have spent a year on it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which countries actually have shrinking populations?

The countries most often identified as having falling total or working age populations include Japan, South Korea, Italy, Spain, Germany, Taiwan, China, and much of central and eastern Europe including Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and the Baltic states. The authoritative sources are each country's national statistics office and the UN Population Division's World Population Prospects. Read the current release, because the year in which a country's population turns down is frequently revised as new data arrives.

Does a shrinking population mean easier immigration?

Sometimes. Japan, Germany, Spain and Taiwan all widened routes in the last several years. Hungary narrowed foreign labour into a temporary employer tied category, Sweden raised its maintenance threshold, and Canada reduced planned admission levels. Demographic pressure raises the probability that routes exist. The political response decides how open they are and whether they lead to settlement.

Do these countries want people at my skill level?

Check the designated fields and shortage lists rather than assuming. Several shrinking countries have opened deliberately at the trade, technician, care and hospitality level, because that is where domestic supply is thinning fastest. Others restrict to professional categories with degree or salary requirements. The list published by the issuing authority is the answer, and it is occupation specific.

How current are shortage and designation lists?

They are revised, usually annually and sometimes more often, and an occupation can be removed because the government judged the shortage eased. Use the current version from the issuing authority, note its publication date, and reconfirm before you pay for any test, assessment or examination that depends on it. Assume nothing about what the list will say when you arrive.

Is a temporary work permit in a shrinking country worth taking?

It depends on what you want from it. A rotational permit can raise your earnings for a defined period and give you documented overseas experience, and both of those have value. It will not give you settlement if the country designed it not to. Read the permit conditions for duration, renewal limits, family accompaniment and any path to permanent residence before you accept, and treat the absence of a residence path as a fact about the route rather than something you can negotiate later.

Do I need language skills for these routes?

Frequently, and the level varies enormously. Japan and Korea attach language testing to major categories. Germany's requirements depend on the route and on whether your occupation is regulated. Several European routes function in practice at a much lower language level for the visa and a much higher one for actually getting hired. Check the published requirement for the specific permit, then form your own view about the level you need to work.

Where do I find the real numbers on population decline?

For a single country, its national statistics office publishes births, deaths and population projections. For cross country comparison, the UN Population Division publishes World Population Prospects, and Eurostat covers EU member states. For shortage evidence, use the body that publishes vacancy analysis in that country, such as the Federal Employment Agency in Germany. Take the numbers from those releases directly.

Population decline is why these routes exist. Whether one of them reaches your occupation is a separate question, answerable in an afternoon of reading authority pages. The graduates competing against you at home face the opposite arithmetic, which is the subject of why the queue keeps lengthening for engineers. Skill moves from where it is abundant to where it is scarce. Find out which side of that your occupation sits on, and check it against the authority that publishes the answer.