Chloe Rahman, a third-year communications student at Carleton University, experienced the competitive market for months after starting her summer job hunt in December last year.Spencer Colby/The Globe and Mail
Young people looking to get their foot in the labour market’s door this summer are feeling the crunch of a sluggish economy, fierce competition and fewer opportunities – a challenging situation for recent graduates and students in search of seasonal work.
Youth have been consistently struggling in the job market. For more than a year, the unemployment rate for 15- to 24-year-olds has hovered around 14 per cent, more than double Canada’s overall jobless rate, according to Statistics Canada.
Some young people are applying to hundreds of jobs, but employers are leaning away from entry-level candidates or hiring less because of economic uncertainty, experts say. For youth, being unable to get into the job market now can set back their careers by years and discourage some from job-seeking at all, leading to more long-term unemployment.
“The rising youth unemployment rate actually understates how bad the job market has gotten,” said Brendon Bernard, a senior economist at job search company Indeed Hiring Lab Canada. He pointed to the youth employment rate – the percentage of young people who work – as the more worrying statistic.
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Last September, that number hit 53.6 per cent – the lowest youth employment rate since November, 1998.
Canada currently has a “low-fire, low-hire” economy, said Tricia Williams, the director of research at the Future Skills Centre research institute. While companies are generally not laying off scores of employees, they’re also not hiring as much, which Dr. Williams tied to the economic uncertainty posed by U.S. tariffs and many consumers watching their wallets.
“If you’re not selling as many ice cream cones, you don’t need as many scoopers scooping ice cream,” Dr. Williams said.
Altogether, young people looking for a summer job are staring down a “perfect storm,” she added.
Facing that market is stressful, said Fatima Khalid, a first-year computing science student at the University of Alberta. During her job search, she submitted an estimated 450 applications.
Ms. Khalid had to pass on many opportunities where she was asked to work hours that didn’t align with her class schedule.
“I wanted to give up,” she said.
As pandemic restrictions eased, businesses rushed to hire labour, but the Bank of Canada’s efforts to curb inflation through higher interest rates cooled the economy, and recent U.S. tariffs on Canada have also chilled hiring plans.
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In January, there were about 492,000 job vacancies in the country – down from a peak of nearly one million in the first half of 2022. That means there were about three unemployed people for every job vacancy in the country, compared to 1.3 people for every vacancy three years ago.
As employers pulled back on hiring, a population surge from immigration between 2022 and 2024 created stiff competition for jobs. The youth labour market “just fell off a cliff” midway through 2024, Mr. Bernard said.
Last year, youth unemployment rose in the summer months, culminating in a 14.6 per cent unemployment rate in September. Excluding the peak pandemic years, that was the highest jobless rate for Canadian youth since September, 2010.
In March, the rate of people aged 20 to 24 who were employed was 68.9 per cent, down about three percentage points from three years ago.
But teenagers had an even worse time. In March, 36.7 per cent of 15- to 19-year-olds were employed – a drop of about 10 percentage points from March, 2023.
Chloe Rahman, a third-year communications student at Carleton University, experienced the competitive market for months after starting her summer job hunt in December last year.
“You apply to 100 jobs and then you get one or two interviews, and then you might not even get those jobs,” she said.
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There’s “a lot of desperation” among young people job hunting, said Timothy Lang, the president of national charity Youth Employment Services.
The usual job competition that “heats up” ahead of the summer is exacerbated by the fact that employers don’t receive around 20 or 30 in-person applications any more. Now that everything is done digitally, they can receive hundreds, he said.
“Many young people are getting lost in that digital quagmire,” Mr. Lang said.
Young people whose parents have good networks will likely have an advantage in the challenging labour market, said Dr. Williams of the Future Skills Centre. That’s why public programs to support youth employment are important, she added.
“Not everyone has parents with connections or might not know people who are hiring, so we’re really at risk of exacerbating structural inequalities,” she said.
In the long term, a young person’s inability to find work early in their career can negatively impact their future wages and discourage them from pursuing certain careers, Dr. Williams said.
But, there’s reason to be “cautiously optimistic” about their prospects, Mr. Lang said. Summer is when many positions for young people open up – such as the 100,000 Canada Summer Jobs openings announced by the federal government on Monday.
Starting this summer, Ms. Khalid has been hired to guide tours and help with events at the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. She feels “way better” having secured a position, especially one that aligns with her interests and will even continue into the next academic year, she said.
Ms. Rahman will be working as a lifeguard, a position she landed through connections with a lifeguarding supervisor she worked for in high school. She is disappointed she won’t be working in a communications job more aligned with her career path, but said that she will keep applying for more opportunities.
“Having a job at all is definitely a relief,” she said.