&gt; The global population grew at a rate of almost 2% a year throughout the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s and the 1980s. That slowed to a rate of between 1% and 1.5% a year in the 1990s and 2000s and that rate of change is now forecast to fall relatively quickly...The working-age share rose strongly for the 40 years to 2012...An ONS report of 2014 found that UK real wages in the 1970s and 1980s grew by an average of 2.9% a year.  That fell to 1.5% in the 1990s, and 1.2% between 2000 and 2010...<p>According to the article&#x27;s own data, rising real wages have occurred during a time of increasing population and an increasing share of the population being working-age, and slowed as population growth slowed.  But the article goes on to argue<p>&gt; A smaller workforce though should raise demand for workers<p>but doesn&#x27;t this contradict the very evidence cited in the article?