The government has assessed that the nation’s working-age population will begin to decline from 2022 and from then on slip by wide margins every year amid vast demographic changes.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor made the assessment in a report released on Tuesday. 

The ministry forecast that labor supply and demand will begin to have major limitations due to low birth rates and an aging society. 

According to Statistics Korea, the total number of working South Koreans over the age of 15 is rising slowly while the working-age population up to the age of 64 is declining and is expected to see increasingly wider drops. 

As a result, the report projects that the number of working individuals between the ages of 15 and 64 will begin to contract from 2022 while South Korea's total labor force will dip from 2026 after having posted growth. 

In 2018, the nation’s working-age population amounted to some 25-and-a-half million. That figure is set to shrink to 24-point-eight million in 2028. 

Though the nation's overall population growth is set to slow down through 2028, the economic activity rate of the working-age population is expected to increase given the rise in labor demand.

The report projects that economic activity rate to reach 72-point-six percent in 2028, higher than last year’s 69-point-three percent.