{"id":957122,"date":"2026-11-03T19:42:14","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T19:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/957122\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T19:42:14","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T19:42:14","slug":"young-workers-face-tough-job-market-but-ai-is-not-necessarily-to-blame-report-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/957122\/","title":{"rendered":"Young workers face tough job market, but AI is not necessarily to blame, report finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Staff speak with attendees at a health care job fair in 2022. A new Statscan report finds ‘no broad evidence’ AI has impacted hiring or job separation rates since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.Lorraine O’Sullivan\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

A recent study from Statistics Canada suggests that while it may be more difficult for youth to land a job, artificial intelligence<\/a> is not necessarily to blame.<\/p>\n

The study published last week said it found \u201cno broad evidence\u201d that the rise of AI has led to substantial decreases in hiring or increases in job separation rates \u2013 which account for voluntary and involuntary ending of employment \u2013 in Canada since November, 2022, when ChatGPT publicly launched.<\/p>\n

It also noted this was the case for younger workers and people in jobs it classified as potentially more susceptible to AI substitution, like data-entry clerks or computer coding-intensive occupations.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is no doubt reshaping sort of workflows and redefining jobs right now. I have no doubt about that,\u201d said Tahsin Mehdi, a senior research economist at the agency and study co-author. \u201cIt\u2019s just, it may not be eliminating entire jobs right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018That field is dead\u2019: Bracing for AI disruption, white-collar workers are pre-emptively changing careers<\/a><\/p>\n

Statistics Canada noted hiring and job separation rates, which account for layoffs, from the six months before November, 2022, to the six months ahead of August, 2026, were \u201cgenerally within historical ranges or represented a continuation of pre-existing trends.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study examined data from labour force surveys for workers aged 15 to 64 in Canada between January, 2006, and August, 2026, and classified jobs based on potential exposure to and complementarity with AI, which measured how the technology affects different jobs and if AI is a tool that can enhance a worker\u2019s output or be a substitute for human tasks.<\/p>\n

Mehdi said hiring and job separation rates were used because they can offer \u201cearly signals of shifts in the labour market\u201d whether due to trade dynamics, economic factors, tech disruptions or AI.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Youth job market<\/p>\n

He said data showed a decline in hiring for young workers across industries, including jobs generally seen as less impacted by AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to sort of differentiate (or) sort of tease out, well, if it\u2019s happening across the economy, then how can we really say that AI is definitely impacting certain jobs?\u201d Mehdi said.<\/p>\n

For example, the study noted that in jobs with low exposure to AI, the hiring rate for employees aged 15 to 29 decreased from 4 per cent in the six months before November, 202,2 to 3.3 per cent in the six months before August, 2026. Meanwhile, over that same period, youth hiring rates in jobs more vulnerable to AI substitution edged down from 3.2 per cent to 3 per cent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of competing economic forces out there,\u201d Mehdi said. \u201cAI is another layer of complexity, but we have trade dynamics, U.S. tariffs, we have immigration shocks over the past couple of years, the rapid growth in population, which had an impact on the labour. It\u2019s sort of hard to tease out how AI fits into all that when we have so many things going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study also indicated hiring rates in coding-intensive jobs decreased from 2.5 per cent to 1.9 per cent in the 2022 to 2026 time span, but Mehdi said hiring in that field rose to above five per cent around 2020 and 2021, and firms may have over-hired during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

People check their phones in front of an AI robot at the All In artificial intelligence conference in Montreal in 2023.Ryan Remiorz\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

\u201cOften people sort of mischaracterize that as an AI effect, when in reality it could have been firms just simply adjusting their workforce,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Employment growth for younger workers was relatively weak \u2013 regardless of potential exposure to AI \u2013 in the post-pandemic period, according to the research.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the pandemic, the labour market did shift in a substantial way, and some groups of the population, such as youth, they might be still sort of feeling the reverberations and aftershocks from the pandemic,\u201d Mehdi said.<\/p>\n

AI unlikely to cause \u2018job apocalypse,\u2019 TD report says<\/a><\/p>\n

Detecting AI\u2019s impact<\/p>\n

Still, the study lands amid ongoing fear over AI\u2019s possible impact on jobs. Last week, The Associated Press reported Microsoft was offering voluntary buyouts<\/a> to 60,000 employees in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United States as the company spends heavily on AI.<\/p>\n

Viet Vu, the manager of economic research at The Dais, a think tank at Toronto Metropolitan University, said he\u2019s not surprised by Statistics Canada\u2019s findings and it\u2019s part of a growing body of evidence \u2013 including in his own research \u2013 that shows \u201cyou just can\u2019t detect AI\u2019s impact on the Canadian labour market just yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vu suggested fear over AI can arise from the fact that it has the potential to impact every sector of the economy and is changing at a pace faster than our labour market is accustomed to.<\/p>\n

But he suggested a greater fear among young people comes from the notion that AI can \u201cchange the fundamental social contract of work.\u201d <\/p>\n

Would a \u2018robot tax\u2019 help deter AI-related job losses?<\/a><\/p>\n

Most people go to school, gain experience in their respective field and use that to land a first job, which leads to future jobs until retirement, Vu explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf any of these middle steps disappear, such as the step in which you\u2019re getting your first job, where you no longer have the opportunity to translate what you learned in school, to leverage that into a career, then that spells a lot of trouble,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dispelling fear around AI<\/p>\n

Studies like this one can \u201chelp dispel some of that immediate fear and counter some of the existing fearmongering\u201d around AI\u2019s impact on the work force, Vu said, but it doesn\u2019t address the unease people may have about the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut these kinds of studies are really the only way for us to actually understand if those future scary worlds may actually come to be, and if it does come to be, for us be able to respond appropriately,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The study\u2019s authors noted the insights represented early findings.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs AI adoption accelerates, it will be essential to continue monitoring labour market trends to better understand how technological changes are reshaping the economy \u2013 and for whom,\u201d the study said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Staff speak with attendees at a health care job fair in 2022. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":957123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,901,276,277,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-957122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alberta","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957122","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=957122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/957123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=957122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=957122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=957122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}