More than 50,000 job seekers attended the CNE job fair on Wednesday, with many young applicants highlighting the difficulties of navigating a competitive and uncertain job market.<\/p>\n
The annual fair took place at the Enercare Centre at Toronto\u2019s Exhibition Place, and according to the CNE, nearly 54,000 people applied for the fair online, the first in its history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Positions up for grabs included game attendees, food service staff, retail workers, and more.<\/p>\n
The record number of applicants comes as the youth national unemployment rate was over 14 per cent as of June, according to Statistics Canada.<\/p>\n
Dara Hosein was one of thousands of youth at the fair, the 16-year-old was filled with joy as she left with a job in the games department, however, it came after a long search.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe search has been hard,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve been searching since I was 14, this is my first time getting a job that\u2019s not just a one day thing,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hosein says she\u2019s relieved that the hunt can finally come to an end.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel really special, I really felt like I showed my true self\u2026 I\u2019m the highest in the world right now,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sixteen-year-old Kayla Nguyen also walked away from the fair as newly employed, but walked in feeling restless, having endured a long search.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been going to job fair after job fair, there\u2019s so many people in the same room as you, it\u2019s very scary and overwhelming,\u201d Nguyen said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite the search being long for many, Nguyen said she was surprised by the record-breaking turnout, and didn\u2019t think it would be competitive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting much, I just wanted to come for the experience and get more comfortable doing interviews,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eighteen-year-old Moiz M. tells Now Toronto that he arrived at the job fair at 6:00 a.m. to be at the front of the line, with hopes of securing a job after searching all summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cMe and my friend have been out every day at malls, sometimes they don\u2019t even take our resumes,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moiz says he\u2019s starting university in the fall and wants to switch his attention to his studies, but not before hopefully being one of the lucky thousands getting hired at the event.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eighteen-year-old Ethan S. tells Now Toronto he doesn\u2019t care what job he walks out of the fair with, as long as he walks out with one.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve applied for maybe around 30 jobs, I\u2019ve gotten some interviews, but bad luck,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But with thousands of positions looking to be filled at this year\u2019s CNE, he\u2019s hopeful that luck will change, and he has the skills to back it up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can do anything,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The CNE returns to Toronto from August 15 to September 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 50,000 job seekers attended the CNE job fair on Wednesday, with many young applicants highlighting the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48,18060,26672],"class_list":["post-35732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cne","tag-cne-job-fair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}