Many young people struggling to find jobs

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:05]Welcome back on this Monday evening.

[00:00:06]Canada's unemployment rate has inched up in recent months, but one area that's soaring, the jobless rate among young people, which currently sits at 14.3%.

[00:00:17]Now, the general unemployment rate is 6.9. So, a vast difference. Watching it very closely is Brendan Bernard, senior economist with Indeed. That's the job site where young people, a lot of people, young people in particular though, look for and apply for jobs. And he's in Toronto. Uh Brandon, good to see you again. Where should that jobless number be for young people ideally?

[00:00:41]>> Well, I'd say ideally roughly about double plus a little bit more than the overall average unemployment rate. Um so uh or sorry actually the the unemployment rate of folks over 25. So right now it's in the range of 14%. And part of that 14% is just the economy is soft overall. Employer hiring appetite isn't particularly strong and so we expect that to result in a higher unemployment rate and the overall national unemployment rate is 6.7% but as you mentioned it's 14.3% for youth.

[00:01:18]it's it's it's below uh 6% for those uh o over 25. So ideally um you know we'd like to see a stable ratio between the unemployment rate above of people above o under 25 and over 25.

[00:01:33]>> Okay let me >> these these these days sorry uh these days the unemployment rate of youth is higher than it should be uh just based on how the overall economy is going.

[00:01:42]Okay, let I should have set this out at the beginning. The age group when we talk about youth are what 15 to 24.

[00:01:49]>> 15 to 24 is the general way that Stackan groups them. Uh that said, the market does look quite different teens versus early 20s.

[00:01:57]>> Okay. You said the youth market is in quote dire straits. That was almost a year ago. Has your opinion changed?

[00:02:07]>> I think we're in a very similar situation as last year. So glass half full, I don't think it actually has gotten worse, but it was just already quite bad. And uh and I think um it's just more of the same since then. and and like I was just saying um the the sort of strength of the market it really there's a contrast between folks in their teens and early 20s where the teenage employment rate this is the share of the population with a job 15 to 19 year olds it's dropped 9 percentage points over the past three years. Uh that's just a huge plunge whereas among the early 20s somethings uh it's down about 3 percentage points. So a big uh contrast in the in the two conditions.

[00:02:50]And one of the reasons I think for the weaker youth numbers is that among the 20somes, they're finding it tougher to find like entry level sort of career track jobs. And so instead they're working in some of the jobs more frequently uh worked by youth uh sorry teens. So they may be keeping that restaurant job or retail job that otherwise they would have tried to park to go, you know, get their we say forever job, but their their career.

[00:03:17]>> Yeah. It's a traffic jam. Uh when the when the labor market weakens, things start to back up. And so it's not just tougher to get a job, getting a good job and getting and moving up the job ladder from people currently working in entry level roles also gets tougher. And so all these factors over the past few years combined with until recently a surge in the number of non-permanent residents in Canada, I think they've all come together along with a weak economy to result in a pretty weak employment situation for Canadian youth.

[00:03:48]>> What's the risk of a high youth jobless rate?

[00:03:52]>> Uh there's several. I mean f first there's just the direct monetary impacts of people not finding work. Um, now for teenagers in high school or sort of uh uh uh students looking for work in the summer, the stakes aren't quite as high as they are if you're sort of uh living under uh living away from home and you know need to pay need that paycheck to pay rent every month. But both cases, I mean, there are youth in both camps, uh, who are struggling. And so, the direct financial impact um, I is is, uh, is most top of mind. But then you talk about just like getting that first level of entry experience, showing up every day, dealing with co-workers of a variety of uh, demographics and personality types, and, you know, having a boss. Um the these are all important uh things to learn uh that people pick up in their first jobs in the labor market and we've just seen a jump in the people who've never had a job uh among the 15 to 24 year old cohort and that so just this delay in the first job is just going to I think like ripple and it's not that things we can't catch up but if the job market remains weak then just there's a greater number of people in this sort of like delayed entry into the labor force that I think has long-term consequences. is both on experience and skills and money.

[00:05:10]>> The few seconds we've got left, Ottawa has opened a youth job bank of sorts with some uh you know, some some federal jobs there. Have you heard of that making any impact at this point? I mean, it's newly open.

[00:05:25]>> Uh you know, I think these programs, uh including just like the the federal government's like summer jobs program, you know, it it has impacts on the margin, but at the end of the day, you can't fake a strong labor market. And that includes for specific demographics like youth. Like I was saying, youth for youth to be doing well in the labor market, you need employers to be hiring both so that they can get jobs, but also their competitors can get jobs elsewhere. And so that traffic jam effect um reversing that clearing the traffic jam requires just stronger hiring appetite across the economy. And that's just something that like you you need just a a better macroeconomic situation. And right now the forecasts for the Canadian economy are stable but subdued and so they suggest more the same for the year ahead.

[00:06:16]>> Brandon Bernard of Indeed, thank you very much. We always appreciate your uh inpoint uh viewpoint on uh on this matter. We'll talk to you again. No doubt.

[00:06:25]>> Thanks for having me.

[00:06:26]>> We'll take a break. We'll be back with much more.