Two research reports released this week look at the issue from very different perspectives. The AMP.NATSEM income and wealth report looks at the changing face of the Australian labor force over the past 20 years.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics meanwhile looks forward and provides some updated projections of what our population may look like by the year 2051.

The simple issue facing us is that at the moment the worker to retiree ratio is 5.6 - that is there are 5.6 people working hard, paying taxes for every person over the age of 65.

By 2040 that is forecast to drop to 2.4 people working compared to each person over the age of 65. That is a simple but powerful indicator of the change that will occur within our workforce over the next four or five decades.

But there are some positive signs that perhaps the ageing population crunch will not be as painful as has been predicted. For a start workforce participation rates among older Australians has risen according to the NATSEM research so it seems the federal government initiatives to encourage older Australians to continue working are having an effect.

For example in the past 10 years there was a 30% increase in the number of men over the age of 65 still working. Importantly for men aged 55-59 - and in particular those looking to ramp up their super savings in the latter part of their working life - the workforce participation rate was also up significantly after declining between 1985-95.

But the big shift in the working population is the dramatic increase in the number of women working - in particular women in the 45 to 64 age bracket. The number of women aged between 55 and 59 working has doubled and for women aged 60 to 64 it has nearly tripled which may be the result of the pension eligibility age increasing gradually for women, according to NATSEM.

To get an idea of what the population of Australia will look like the Australian Bureau of Statistics models demographic trends and on its mid-range projections we will be living in a country with about 28 million people - up from 20.1 million today. But the number of people over the age of 65 will rise dramatically from 2.6 million today to between 7 and 9 million people in 2051. Even more dramatic is that the number of people over the age of 85 is tipped to jump from 300,000 today to up to 2.7 million in 2051. That really underscores the increasing risk of outliving your retirement savings.

So we have been through a period of great workplace change and the indications are that the shifts in working patterns will continue to be dramatic.

But the sobering finding of the NATSEM studies is when it comes to funding retirement income. The principal source of income for 75 per cent of those people 65 and older is government benefits like the age pension. Yet only 29 per cent of people who are over 45 and still working expect government benefits to be their principal source of income.

As the NATSEM report says there is a considerable gap between expectation and reality.

So the old message about people needing to save more for their retirement comes up again. Either that or perhaps the baby boomer generation should be out there convincing Gen Xers that having more children is their patriotic duty.