Simon Kuestenmacher

That is not too bad from a workforce perspective because it just means we need fewer shop assistants and we need more warehouse workers, more delivery drivers.

But it is a problem for main streets because it does ultimately mean that more and more brick and mortar stores, we're not

talking about Bunnings or big shops, but small stores, that they will have to close their doors because they operate on margins of 5% to 10% or something like this.

And so if their sales go down 15%, it doesn't make any sense for them to stay open.

So then you have empty shops on a main street.

And that is the death of a main street.

If you are a shop owner in a main street and you see any kind of store being available for lease, that is a catastrophe for

you it means that your main street becomes less attractive and it becomes less of a destination therefore all the local governments all the you know business associations whatever you have in your in your local area they must band together to fill those shops be it with some sort of discounted retail you know make it into a ball pit make it into a free community center arts installation whatever it is you must not have empty storefronts at your main street if you want to continue to have the main street as

the destination.

So at the start of the pandemic, which was meant to be the only lockdown, the first lockdown, people said, surely there'll be a corona baby boom in nine months time, as if the only thing we were going to do in lockdown is to procreate.

So as a demographer, that doesn't come as a surprise that this didn't happen.

In times of economic uncertainty, in times of historic pandemics, there were always fewer rather than more births.

Simply because, you know, if you're uncertain about your income, if you're uncertain about your economic future,

you're not going to risk putting a very expensive thing into the world.

So you're not doing this.

And we will see the birth rate drop even more.

The low birth rate would be a problem if we didn't have migration.

We are a migrant country.

So the low birth rate actually doesn't bother me at all because we will just get young, skilled workers through our doors, you know, when they are in their early 20s.

which is just fine.