In the next five decades or so, the size of the working age population as a percentage of total population will reduce drastically in a number of developed countries. According to projections by the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2050, the most populous countries with highest ratios of working age population to non-working population will be countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Congo and a number of countries that are today developing or under-developed — mostly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. These countries will have the largest base of employable young population.

As globalization becomes more and more seamless, labor markets will increasingly become global. But you don’t have to be an expert in international economics to know that none of these countries — with the exception of India — are yet in a position to emerge as major global labor markets. They have huge gaps to bridge in business frameworks, legal systems, education and infrastructure to be an active part of services globalization.

Till such time when those gaps are bridged, the employers in developed markets (with aging population in their own countries) will have to restrict their hunt to a handful of locations — like India, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Russia and Malaysia to scout for labor. Some of these countries — most notably China — will have their own large base of aging population to serve and may not have spare labor force to serve the rest of the world.

That has the potential to create a situation of acute labor shortage, which may even jeopardize the growth of business and economy in many parts of the world. And you do not have to wait till 2050 to witness such an eventuality. It may happen much earlier.

Take global outsourcing. You may well see a situation when too many service jobs will chase too few potential employees. In other words, it is not countries like India and Philippines that will compete for outsourcing jobs from U.S. and Germany but the other way around. Those markets will compete for the limited base of talent in India and Philippines.

In such a situation, the equation of global service delivery will change dramatically. The developed world economies will need the developing world workforce. And if they fail to tap that workforce effectively, it could adversely affect their economic growth.

These are not theoretical, armchair analyses, but almost in-your face situations that governments and businesses in some nations have been early to realize. The establishments in the U.S. and U.K., which have a liberalized track record have not succumbed to pressure from protectionist lobbies, and have allowed free trade to flourish. Other developed economies that have realized this early in the game, include Australia and the Netherlands, which have embraced outsourcing with open arms, and are fast maturing as outsourcing markets.

On the other hand, some of the existing economic giants like France, Germany and Japan have been slow to respond to the changing scenario. While the German and Japan markets have still dabbled in some form of global out-sourcing, France has been clearly behind. In Europe, Netherlands, a much smaller economy, is a bigger market for outsourcing services than France. Not only have the Dutch companies been in the forefront of innovating in outsourcing, the government of Netherlands has gone out of the way to invite global offshoring giants to the country, with the prime minister visiting Bangalore to woo the likes of Infosys and Wipro. Both the companies, as a matter of fact, have responded by making Amsterdam a hub of their European operations. In Australia, the government has taken a lead in outsourcing. In fact, even local authorities in cities like Melbourne and Sydney have offshored their IT work. It is a no-brainer that when other markets that lag behind wake up to the new reality, markets that have embraced global service delivery earlier, will have a distinct upper hand, because of their being ahead in the learning curve.

Who knows — that may create new winners in a fully globalized world! Not just the emerging economies like India and China, but also those like Australia and the Netherlands, which will use their existing economic edge and the right global labor strategy to get past some of the past leaders.