There is a market for sweeping economic analyses, generally predicting that the sky is about to fall on our heads. Thomas Malthus arguably started it with his 18th-century prediction that population growth would always run ahead of food production. He was unlucky in having his conjecture picked over for centuries. Normally, economists get away with it.

Before reading the IMF’s recent long-term prediction of global labour markets, therefore, I felt the need to go back a quarter of a century to see what similar organisations were forecasting. The OECD’s 2000 report on “reforms for an ageing society” is representative of the thinking at the time and its logic remains sound.

Baby boomers in middle age would start to retire in the 2000s, it predicted, ensuring that total employment as a proportion of the population would start falling from 2010. This drop would be mitigated by more women working, but overall the effective working life of someone in an advanced economy would hover around 34 to 35 years.