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By Kao Chia-he / Staff reporter
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Long-term care shortage looms, with the nation projected to see a sharp rise in elderly people needing care, governmental data suggested.
The National Development Council’s (NDC) in its 2024 population projections report said that according to the medium projection scenario, Taiwan’s population of people aged 85 or older is expected to rise sharply to about 1.39 million in 2045 from approximately 470,000 last year.
The projection report is scheduled to be updated in August.
Caregivers push people in wheelchairs at a park in Taipei in an undated photograph.
Photo: Taipei Times
Ministry of Health and Welfare data and related studies indicated that the disability rate among Taiwan’s population aged 65 or older is about 15 percent, and that after age 85, the rate increases significantly depending on gender, with an average of about 50 percent.
Experts estimate that in two decades, about 700,000 Taiwanese older than 85 would need assistance with daily activities or medical care.
There are 97,000 to 100,000 licensed local caregivers, and about 70,000 provide hourly home services — helping elderly people bathe, preparing meals or accompanying them to medical appointments — visiting homes for a few hours a day, while the other 30,000 work in elderly care centers, nursing homes or hospitals, usually on three-shift schedules or two 12-hour shifts, the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Long-Term Care 2.0 statistics showed.
Almost no local workers take on 24-hour live-in care, leaving the bulk of this work to migrant caregivers, the data showed.
There are only 225,000 social welfare migrant workers, more than 92 percent of whom are home caregivers, the Ministry of Labor said.
Without continued expansion in recruitment, there could be a shortfall of about 500,000 workers and a “care tsunami” could sweep through many households, experts said.
Last month, Taiwan had about 225,000 migrant workers employed in social welfare, government data showed.
Indonesians make up the largest group with 186,000, followed by 20,608 from the Philippines, 18,679 from Vietnam and 231 from Thailand, and most — about 209,000 — work as home caregivers, while just 16,354 are employed in care institutions, the data showed.
The nation’s labor force structure also projected a shortfall.
The NDC’s population projections showed that the nation is entering the first wave of retirements among the baby boomers born in the 1950s and 1960s, with a second wave of retirees from “Generation X” born in the 1960s and 1970s following within the next 20 years. Together, these two waves would total 6.67 million retirees.
However, during the same period, only about 1.6 million young people would be entering the workforce, leaving a shortfall of more than 5 million workers, experts said.
The projections indicated that Taiwan’s working-age population would decline to 11.84 million in 2045 from 16.17 million in 2024 — a drop of 4.33 million over 20 years. Moreover, those aged 45 to 64 would make up about 53.3 percent of the working-age population, signaling a highly aging labor force.
Pointing to the current labor force participation rate for youth aged 15 to 29 is only about 38 percent — far below levels in Europe and the US — and that about 200,000 university graduates each year are in a “lying flat” state of neither studying nor working, experts said that in the short term, encouraging youth employment is unlikely to solve the domestic labor shortage.
