In December, there were a bit more than 209.1 million people of working age in the United States, according to government numbers. In March, the latest numbers show, there were a little bit less than 208.6 million. That decline of half a million people isn’t a big deal, but it’s a sign of a bigger demographic problem the U.S. is facing.

In a few years, the working-age population will begin falling, and it will keep falling for the foreseeable future. While this happens, baby boomers will continue to retire, and so the worker-to-dependent ratio, already at all-time highs, will accelerate. Unless automation can fully fill the gap, the result will be shortages, high inflation, and lower quality.

The working-age population in the U.S. used to grow at a steady clip. Now it’s basically flat. From 1980 until the Baby Bust began in 2008, our working-age population was growing between 1% and 1.5% per year. (There were bumps in the road, and so the below chart uses 5-year-rolling averages.) Nowadays, the working-age population is growing at about 0.2% — as much growth in five years as we used to get in one year.

Pretty soon, America’s working-age population will start falling, like it has in Japan, Italy, and many other countries. That’s because we have had fewer babies almost every year since 2007. There are presently fewer children than there were 10 years ago, and so in 10 years, we will have fewer people in their twenties than we have today.

Now this common measure of the working-age population catches the demographic problem a bit early because it counts 15 as working-age. But even if you wanted to start counting at age 18, we know that the universe of potential workers will shrink in a decade.

Again, are we ready for this? As these numbers roll in every quarter, will economists and policymakers respond?

Specifically, I wonder if politicians will ever adapt their rhetoric to this new reality. For the entire lives of every living politician, the main thing to promise people has been “job creation.” But soon, we’ll be in an economy with chronically more jobs than workers.

The next 30 years will look very different from the past 60 years, thanks to our Baby Bust.