At the No Frills in Stratford, P.E.I., 17-year-old Ben Hunt is stocking package after package of salad kits onto a refrigerated shelf in the produce section.
It’s after school, but the Grade 12 student at Charlottetown Rural High School is on the clock, and has been for more than a year.
“A lot of my friends work here, locally owned, and I live like 10 minutes up the highway. I drive a car,” he told CBC News when asked why he took the job.
“I’ve got to pay for college next year and stuff. So money is a big part of it… I know the owners. They’re good people, so it’s nice working under them.”
Hunt is a produce clerk, and said the job has given him much more than just a paycheque.
“Obviously I’ve learned how to do all the stuff in the department, but I guess the bigger part I look at is like the social skills and stuff you get working with, like, around all the people,” he said.
“I love talking to people.”
Ben Hunt, a Grade 12 student at Charlottetown Rural High School, has been working as a produce clerk at the No Frills in Stratford for more than a year. (Thinh Nguyen/CBC)
For young workers like Hunt, P.E.I. has been something of an outlier in a tough national job market.
While youth unemployment across Canada has climbed to concerning levels, experts say P.E.I. has bucked the trend. A booming tourism sector and one of the fastest-growing economies in the country have kept jobless rates for young Islanders comparatively lower than the national average.
But economists warn that picture may be softening, and that even in good times, a first job on the Island doesn’t always mean a future there.
David Campbell, with Moncton-based Jupia Consultants Inc., said that while youth unemployment rates have been rising nationally — and have also been increasing in his home province of New Brunswick — rates on P.E.I. for those 15 to 24 have generally been trending downward.
Statistics Canada data shows youth unemployment on the Island spiked during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, at times climbing well above 20 per cent, before easing in recent years.
Campbell points to last July, during the height of the summer tourism season, when P.E.I.’s youth unemployment rate fell to 8.2 per cent.
While the Island’s youth labour market follows a strong seasonal pattern every year with unemployment typically peaking in winter and dropping in summer, Campbell noted that July 2025 was actually the second-lowest July youth unemployment rate on record dating back to 2000, behind only July 2019.
“It does look like on P.E.I., the workforce situation for young people has been reasonably strong,” Campbell said.
Nationally, however, the youth unemployment rate that same month sat at 15.1 per cent — nearly double P.E.I.’s rate. The participation rate, which measures the share of young people either working or looking for work, was also significantly higher on the Island at roughly 86 per cent, compared to 71.5 per cent nationally.
“P.E.I. has been a bit of an outlier compared to other provinces,” he said.
Looking at data from the past 50 summers dating back to 1976 — the earliest year Statistics Canada has on record — last summer’s average youth unemployment rate for Islanders aged 15 to 24 was 8.7 per cent, making it the sixth-lowest summer rate recorded.
Campbell added that P.E.I.’s comparatively strong youth labour market is not entirely new, but said the gap between the Island and the national picture appears to have widened over the past few years.
Tourism driving demand for young workers
At the Atlantic Economic Council in Nova Scotia, senior policy analyst Fred Bergman said the organization defines youth as those aged 15 to 29, rather than 15 to 24.
But regardless of how youth is defined, Bergman said the data still shows certain periods of time, particularly during P.E.I.’s peak tourism season, where youth unemployment rates on the Island have remained lower than national levels.
He said one major reason is the Island’s tourism industry, which rebounded strongly after the pandemic and continues to grow.
“P.E.I.’s economy tends to rely more on tourism than other provinces, and obviously tourism includes things like hospitality, so hotels and restaurants. It also includes retail trade, stores as an example. And so they tend to hire youth quite a bit,” Bergman said.
Campbell agreed, saying the broader strength of P.E.I.’s economy has also supported youth employment.
According to Statistics Canada’s latest preliminary gross domestic product by industry figures, P.E.I. recorded the second-fastest economic growth rate among provinces and territories, behind only Newfoundland and Labrador.
“My conclusion, after studying the P.E.I. market in great detail, is that right now, it’s about as strong as we’ve seen in a while, particularly because the national economy is quite weak right now,” Campbell said.
He noted there are broader concerns nationally around economic uncertainty, including U.S.-Canada trade tensions, slowing business confidence and tighter federal immigration policies that are reducing the number of temporary workers in Canada.
Island tourism operators say they had another banner year in 2025
A number of hotels and inns on P.E.I. say their bookings jumped in 2025, and provincial tourism numbers back that up. The Island set a new record for the number of paid overnight stays last year, and operators are optimistic 2026 will be even better. CBC’s Sheehan Desjardins reports.
Immigration trends are also part of the story behind P.E.I.’s youth labour force.
Bergman said that, like the rest of Canada, P.E.I. saw a big post-pandemic rise in non-permanent residents holding work or study permits — many of them in younger age groups — which boosted the number of young people working or looking for work on the Island. But with the federal government tightening immigration levels, fewer temporary workers are expected to arrive on P.E.I.
Signs of softening emerging
While P.E.I.’s youth unemployment rate still compares favourably to much of the country, recent data suggests unemployment among young Islanders began creeping upward in the latter half of last year.
Bergman said that increase reflects more than just the usual seasonal slowdown as students return to school.
“This sharp reversal, particularly the speed at which youth unemployment increased, reflects broader economic instability earlier in the year linked to U.S. trade uncertainties,” read Service Canada’s Quarterly Labour Market Bulletin for P.E.I. for the final quarter of 2025.
“Reduced business confidence, slower job creation, as well as rising minimum wages, and higher labour costs are all contributing factors that likely intensified the increase in youth unemployment during 2025.”
Fred Bergman of the Atlantic Economic Council says rising economic uncertainty, from trade tensions with the U.S. to the U.S. and Israel-Iran war, are making firms more cautious, and when they cut back, they typically shed part-time and less experienced workers first. (Paul Poirier/CBC)
Bergman said businesses are now facing even more uncertainty heading into the summer, with the ongoing U.S.-Israel war against Iran driving up fuel prices and increasing costs across the economy.
“When you have economic uncertainty and there’s less business activity, the first people that get laid off are often part-time jobs, and people with less work experience,” he said.
“They’ll lay off youth first.”
He added that some businesses may hire fewer young workers this summer — or none at all. Anecdotally, he said he has also seen federal and some provincial governments scaling back summer student hiring.
Long-term challenges remain
Campbell said that while P.E.I.’s labour market has created opportunities for young people, building a long-term career on the Island can still be difficult in some fields.
Many of the jobs being created like in tourism and lower-wage service industries work well as first jobs or summer employment, but don’t always translate into long-term, high-paying careers.
While there are well-paying careers on the Island in sectors such as nursing and biosciences, Campbell noted P.E.I. remains a small economy with a limited labour market.
“If you want to work in certain occupations, there’s either no availability of those jobs on the Island, or very few, and then you have to leave the province,” he said, adding that challenge is common across Atlantic Canada.
Economist David Campbell says summer and part‑time jobs are valuable because they teach young people the basic discipline of showing up for work and give them early experience in the workforce. (CBC)
Having worked with governments on labour market issues, Campbell said policymakers should avoid pressuring young people — or trying to “guilt them into staying” — when opportunities elsewhere better match their goals.
“At the end of the day, you expose your young people to the many career opportunities that are available in your province, but you have to understand, in a small province, there’s going to be a little bit of a higher share of folks that feel they have to leave your province to pursue their careers,” he said.
“Many of them end up coming back later on when they want to have a family. That’s just the nature of the beast.”
Even so, Campbell said part-time and seasonal jobs still provide lots of benefits for young people entering the workforce.
He said he’s aware of cases of young Canadians now entering the workforce in their early 20s with little or no prior work experience.
“They’re coming into the workforce, you know, at 23 and they have no real understanding of what that means, to actually have a job, to actually work eight hours a day, to be, you know, forced every day to come into work,” he said.
“There’s lots of good reasons to encourage your children to work a part time job or a summer job, because they learn the discipline that comes with being in the workforce, and they also learn what it means to earn their own money.”