Immigrants and their U.S.-born relatives will drive a stunning 82 percent of U.S. population growth from 2005 to 2050, according to the latest findings from the Pew Research Center. Download the complete report.

The U.S. population will jump to 438 million by 2050, a 48 percent increase from 2005, which is a slower rate of growth than the country experienced from 1960 to 2005.

Which groups will drive most of the growth and why? Who will be the majority of the U.S. population, and how will all of these trends affect your corporate strategy?

Here are four of the key topics highlighted in Pew's latest report:

1. Immigration. About one in five Americans will be an immigrant in 2050, up from one in eight in 2005, thanks to a foreign-born population that is growing at nearly three times the rate of the overall U.S. population. By 2050, the foreign-born share of the U.S. will top its peak from the immigration wave in the late 1800s. This group accounted for 51 percent of all U.S. population growth from 1960 to 2005, and one in three children will be an immigrant or have immigrant parents by 2050. Check out the September 2007 issue of DiversityInc magazine to learn all about the business case for immigration.

2. No racial majority. Latinos will account for nearly 30 percent of the U.S. population by 2050, tripling the size of their population from 2005. Blacks will be the second-largest population of color but remain stagnant at their 13 percent representation, and Asians, mostly native-born, a switch from previous decades, will be 9 percent of the total U.S. population. White people, who were 67 percent of the U.S. population in 2005, will drop to a minority (47 percent), growing only 4 percent from 2005 to 2050 compared to Latinos' 205 percent

3. Pressure on working parents. As the nation's baby boomers age, the amount of people ages 65 and older will more than double in size from 2005 to 2050 (119 percent growth) while the working-age and younger populations decline as a share of the total. These rapid changes are putting working people with aging parents and children in a major crunch, and benefits will likely become even more important in employment decisions because workers face higher costs. In 2005, there were 59 children and older people for every 100 working-age adults. By 2050, that ratio will slip to 72 per 100. Read all about the sandwich generation in the March 2007 issue of DiversityInc magazine.

4. Work force. More than one in five working-age people will be foreign-born by 2050, with nearly a third of these individuals from Latino backgrounds. Whites will be a minority of people in this age bracket (45 percent) and an even smaller portion of those younger than age 17, which underscores the need for companies to design comprehensive succession planning and recruiting strategies before they get left behind. Check out what DiversityInc's Top 10 Companies for Recruitment & Retention are doing to stay ahead of the game and find out how to recruit top talent with these four tips from a pro. 

Immigration: Behind the Numbers

Why is immigration the main driver of population growth? Women are having fewer children, on average, and there are fewer women of childbearing age compared with past decades, according to the report. Immigrants, especially the Latinos who are driving immigration to the United States, tend to have larger nuclear and extended families, are younger in age and have higher fertility rates than whites. Although most Latinos in the United States are first-generation immigrants, high childbirth rates mean this will level out by 2050 when all three generations each account for a third of the U.S. Latino population.

The net rate of immigration has increased from about 0.3 percent from 1960 to 1965 to 1.5 percent in 2000 and 2005 and is projected to top 2 percent growth from 2045 to 2050, largely fueled by an increase in undocumented immigrants. But changes in national immigration policy could affect the growth in immigrant populations and the productivity they contribute. How does your state measure up on immigration law?  

Immigrants and their descendants are the future work force, according to the portrait of the United States at 2050 from Pew. They will add 76 million people to the working-age population, which would be desperately shrinking without their representation by 2050. While foreign-born women, especially Latinas, are less likely to participate in the work force than their native and white counterparts, increasing education rates in these communities will likely boost their employment levels and the national economy, provided access to education and opportunity remains high in the next four decades.

How will all of this growth affect the global picture? The United States will still be the third-largest country in the world by total population behind China and India, but it will also be the fastest-growing developed country as European regions find themselves stalling in population growth and actually losing some people who emigrate elsewhere.

Readers' Comments

Posted: Thursday, Sep 11, 2008 It's 2050 … What Does Your Work Force Look Like? The data cited in this information was used as a basis for projecting and determinig future educational needs for K-12 and adult populations. Catherine Means

More Marketplace >>