The population is shrinking.
But it's not at all clear that the number of jobs created by, say, an expanding solar industry would be greater than the number lost through, say, a shrinking coal-mining industry.
Reports suggest an extra 250,000 primary places are needed this year, and with land costs escalating in inner cities and budgets shrinking, fulfilling the need will be difficult, but it is right to say that it should not be done by allowing class sizes to creep upwards.
US gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of the general economy, contracted for the first time in three years in early 2014, shrinking at an annual rate of 1% during the first quarter, the Commerce Department said last month.
Shrinking because despite relatively low interest rates and falling fuel prices, staples such as food continue to rise.
It should by now be perfectly obvious to everyone that the Tory party is using the deficit scare as the justification for a rightwing agenda that involves shrinking the state at the expense of the most vulnerable in society.
However, it has been shrinking since, and the two main parties were virtually tied as Osborne got on his feet.
As you get older, more and more people look young, and she proved not to be a student but a 'real person' clinging on to one of the shrinking number of houses not turned over to youthful multiple occupation.
We are being hit by a double whammy: shrinking budgets and organisational instability.
"Our population is growing, the needs of that population are changing and becoming more demanding, and the resources the city has to meet them are shrinking.
However, this year the holiday weekend has a special poignancy, because the number of people who can remember what happened 70 years ago is shrinking fast.
