Chart of the Day: Check out these 2012 and 2050 population pyramids

Retirees to workforce ratio will plunge to just 2:1.

According to CIMB, the Singapore government released two long-term strategic planning papers last week. 

The first, the Population White Paper, highlights the key problem of ageing. The current Singapore citizen population stands at 3.3m vs. a total population of 5.3m. With a quarter (900k) of the current citizen population heading towards retirement by 2020, the citizen workforce will decline as retirees outnumber incoming younger workers.

The retirees-workforce ratio will shrink from the current 5.9 to 2.1 by 2030. This has implications of (at least) doubling the potential tax rate that future generations have to pay just to ensure that the retired generation enjoys the same subsidies.

Here's more from CIMB:

By 2025, thecitizen population will also start to decline. To counter the ageing population, Singapore plans to accept 15k-25k conversion to new citizens each year while keeping a float of ~550k permanent residents (PRs) and accepting 30k new PRs each year.

The base of citizens and PRs will rise from 3.8m now to 4.2m-4.4m by 2030. The foreign population base will rise from 1.5m now to 2.6m by 2030.

The increase in the foreign population is necessary to take on lower value-add jobs and fill positions where there are insufficient locals with the required skillsets since 2-in-3 citizens will be taking PMET jobs by 2030, vs. 1-in-2 now.