What are the effects of overpopulation on employment?

Answer 1

Population increases mean more people competing for the same jobs, but it also means more jobs in general.

More people will need more farmers to grow food. More truckers and train operators to transport it. More stockers to stock it, more checkers to sell it. More people means there will be a greater need for construction workers to build homes and businesses. It means more demand for education and teachers. It means more clothes need to be manufactured (unless they are nudists,) requiring everything from fashion models to fashion designers to factory workers.

In other words, a greater population means that you need more of everything.

It also means a huge savings in terms of volume discounts. Producing vast quantities of a single thing tends to be MUCH cheaper than small quantities of a single thing. With more people, you are likely to have a bigger market for everything.

High prices for goods like food and water will result in people doing everything they can to produce food and water because they can make plenty of money providing them. So long as the government does not step in to ration these necessary goods, the market will solve the problem.

Temporarily, of course, there will be a lot of people unemployed. You are likely to see government anti-employment policies change. The minimum wage and unions will probably disappear as people realize just how many jobs they kill. The same thing is true of automation. Why build robots when you can hire ten people to do the job for cheaper prices?

Eventually, overpopulation will just become 'population.' People will have fewer kids, people will become much more efficient with their resource use, and the world will adjust.