Good morning. For young Canadians looking to break into the job market, there’s not much reassuring news for the near future. Between a sluggish economy, the U.S.-driven trade war and the rise of artificial intelligence (and speculation that it could decimate select entry-level work), the outlook is marked by uncertainty. In focus today is another element to the youth employment crisis: a lack of response, or even acknowledgment, after sending a job application.
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Alin Moayedi, with social services agency S.U.C.C.E.S.S., helps clients during a job fair at Skills For Change in Toronto.Cole Burston/The Globe and Mail
In focusThe summer funk isn’t over yet for young, jobless Canadians
The kids are not okay. That’s abundantly clear in the economic statistics – the youth unemployment rate is the highest since 2010, excluding the pandemic – and also in speaking with young workers, who are trying to navigate a job market with relatively few vacancies.
In fact, over the past three years, total job vacancies across the country have plunged by roughly half. In particular, there’s been a swift decline in jobs that require little education or experience – exactly the sort of positions that young people are looking for.
I’m Matt Lundy, The Globe’s economics editor. For a new feature, my colleague Aajah Sauter and I spoke with young Canadians about their working lives, from high schoolers looking for extra cash to university graduates embarking on their careers. In those conversations, there was a theme that repeatedly came up: ghosting.
“A lot of companies would just ghost you and not respond, so you didn’t even know what stage your application was in,” said Smera Pattanaik, a 19-year-old student heading into her second year at Western University.
“Most of the companies don’t even reply” to applications, said Siobhan O’Donoghue, a recent graduate of the University of Guelph-Humber.
As a concept, “ghosting” has been around for many years, usually to describe social situations in which someone ceases contact with another without explanation.
In the labour context, it means that companies aren’t acknowledging the receipt (or status) of job applications, or that employers stop communicating with people they’ve interviewed.
For young job seekers, who are already contending with the financial pressures of unemployment, getting ghosted is adding insult to injury.
“If you’ve sent out hundreds of applications and you’re not hearing back, it can be quite demotivating after a while,” said Nina Chou, senior operations manager at the youth employment centre at the YWCA Metro Vancouver.
It’s always tough for young people to break into the job market. “Last to get hired and first to get fired,” as the old saying goes. And their employment prospects are especially sensitive to the economic cycle – something outside of their control.
But at least some ghosting is set to vanish.
Starting on Jan. 1, companies in Ontario will have to inform job applicants of whether a hiring decision has been made within 45 days of their last interview. The law will apply to employers with at least 25 workers.
Also next year, Ontario employers who publicly post job ads will have to disclose whether they’re using artificial intelligence to screen, assess or select applicants for the position. And they’ll need to note whether the posting is for an actual job vacancy (as opposed to, say, an effort to collect a bank of résumés).
The success or failure of government policies is often in execution, from how new laws are enforced to how punishments are meted out. (A Toronto-based lawyer told Bloomberg in July that companies who fail to comply with the ghosting law could be fined as much as $100,000, although first offences could result in warnings.)
Still, for frustrated job seekers, this could be a step toward a more considerate hiring process. And perhaps a source of inspiration for other provinces to follow suit.
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Morning update
Global markets drifted lower as investors turned their focus to a key U.S. inflation reading due later in the day for further clues on the Federal Reserve’s rate outlook.
Wall Street futures were in negative territory after the S&P 500 and Dow closed at record highs yesterday. TSX futures followed sentiment lower.
Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was down 0.52 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 slipped 0.26 per cent, Germany’s DAX declined 0.45 per cent and France’s CAC 40 gave back 0.46 per cent.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed 0.26 per cent lower, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.32 per cent.
The Canadian dollar traded at 72.72 U.S. cents.