Jobless summer: Why youth unemployment is at a decade high
Youth unemployment jumped last month to 13.5 per cent, a level of joblessness among Canadians aged 15 to 24 not seen since September of 2014, excluding the pandemic.
Since June of last year, youth unemployment jumped by 2.1 per cent. Brendon Bernard, economist with Indeed Canada, says deteriorating business sentiment and a population boom is driving this spike in unemployed young people.
“It’s been driven by a surge of newcomers from abroad,” he said. “At a time when employer hiring appetite has been on the wane, we now have a surge of youth job seekers, and the demand isn’t there to keep up with the [labour] supply.”
Canada welcomed 1.3 million newcomers in 2023 and the 15–24-year-old population cohort grew by an estimated 335,700 people since last June, according to Statistics Canada.
Tim Lang, president and chief executive at Youth Employment Services, one of the country’s leading employment service organizations that help youth aged 15-30 find employment opportunities, says he has seen an increase in young people seeking their services, including young newcomers to Canada, which has caused an increase in demand for jobs.
“A lot of those new Canadians are youth in the 20s-30s age, so there is far more competition for the existing jobs,” Lang said. “We know in the long-term that increase in new Canadians can lead to further economic opportunity and new businesses, but in the short-term it certainly means more competition.”
The tightness seen in the labour market, following the re-opening of the economy after the pandemic, has dissipated.
Statistics Canada reported job vacancies were down significantly in the first quarter of 2024 across a wide variety of industries, with year-over-year decreases in manufacturing and
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