The Canadian Press has been speaking with young people about the financial challenges facing their generation \u2014 a tough job market, unaffordable housing and goals that seem out of reach.<\/p>\n
\u2018WAITING FOR EVERYTHING TO WORK OUT\u2019<\/p>\n
A few hours into a night out with friends in downtown Toronto, 19-year-old Eleni Koumoundouros has a choice to make.<\/p>\n
Does she end the evening early and start the hour-long commute to Oakville, where she lives with her parents? Or, does she savour the evening a little longer and contend with late-night transit and walking home in the dark?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a recurring question for the third-year undergraduate at the University of Toronto, who says the commute puts a damper on her social life.<\/p>\n
Koumoundouros works 30 hours a week in addition to her schooling, but downtown Toronto rent isn\u2019t affordable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m working so hard to make this money, even if it feels like the money is kind of going nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Koumoundouros says her generation is dismayed by scarce job opportunities.<\/p>\n
The political science student has long hoped for a career in government so she could help pass laws that make people\u2019s lives better, and she hopes today\u2019s policymakers realize the extent of the affordability crisis in Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I could be happier. But right now, I\u2019m not entirely disappointed. I\u2019m just chugging along, waiting for everything to work out.\u201d<\/p>\n
GHOSTED BY EMPLOYERS \u2018THE WORST THING\u2019<\/p>\n
Recent graduate Lauren Hood thought that by now she\u2019d be working at her first real job and starting to live independently.<\/p>\n
But things haven\u2019t gone as planned for the 21-year-old, who completed an undergraduate degree in political studies, philosophy and a certificate in law from Queen\u2019s University in June.<\/p>\n
Hood has been job-searching for months and, while she has found work in a store, there are no prospects in sight in her field of study.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe job market right now is very, very hard to get into,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Hood has been living with her parents in Aurora, Ont., as she continues her job hunt while paying bills with her side gig as a DJ.<\/p>\n
Her job search hasn\u2019t been easy. Hood recalls walking into a restaurant that hosts weekly open interviews.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the interview, they said this would be hiring for next April,\u201d she says. \u201cI was like, \u2018What do you mean next April? It\u2019s September!\u201d<\/p>\n
Hood says she has applied for more than 50 jobs related to her degree and has only fielded two job interviews since graduation.<\/p>\n
Dealing with rejections has been discouraging. Hood says she\u2019s wary of applying for some jobs because it\u2019s hard for her to handle the disappointment.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing ghosted by the employers is, I think, one of the worst feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hood says the search has upset her plan to save money, pay off her debt and eventually write exams for law school.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel behind,\u201d she says. \u201cIn my head, I pictured to be working and ideally, it would be nice to move out and not live at home anymore. But I can\u2019t do that without a job.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018THOSE DREAMS \u2026 ARE OUT OF REACH\u2019<\/p>\n
Taylor Arnt, 27, says the high cost of living means that many young people are unable to meet traditional milestones, like getting married or buying a house, as quickly as previous generations.<\/p>\n
Arnt, who lives in Winnipeg, says in her parents\u2019 and grandparents\u2019 generations, accomplishments felt linear. But that\u2019s no longer the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou went to school, you got a job, you got married, you had kids,\u201d Arnt says. \u201cA lot of those dreams, if we want to follow those, are out of reach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arnt recently lost her policy analyst job due to government funding cuts and is now working as a contracted consultant and group fitness instructor.<\/p>\n
Living with family, Arnt says she has \u201cgiven up on the idea of home ownership any time soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moving out seems far-fetched given the high cost of expenses and her lack of stable employment, she says.<\/p>\n
Arnt also says she\u2019s had to process that she might never get married or have kids.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really difficult to plan for a future and think about those goals when you\u2019re struggling to meet your day-to-day basic needs,\u201d Arnt says.<\/p>\n
\u201cFeeling frustrated that no matter how hard you work, you can\u2019t get to those same places, I think is filtering a lot into how young people are experiencing things and perhaps why they might be so unhappy at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I DON\u2019T WANT TO SPEND ON UNNECESSARY THINGS\u2019<\/p>\n
It took 25-year-old Thivian Varnacumaaran more than 400 job applications before finding work in July as an electrical designer.<\/p>\n
The new graduate from York University in Toronto says he has enough money to pay off his phone bills and other expenses, but there\u2019s not much left over.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still struggling, even with my amount of money that I\u2019m making at the moment, because it is a starting salary,\u201d says Varnacumaaran. \u201cIt will take time to obviously increase that and put it in a wage where I can live comfortably.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s currently living with his family in Markham, Ont., something he calls a \u201cprivilege.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to spend on unnecessary things, so I try my best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Varnacumaaran says he knows of many other young graduates who are finding it tough to make ends meet. <\/p>\n
Ontario\u2019s minimum wage is $17.60 per hour. Varnacumaaran says it\u2019s urgent to raise it to better reflect living costs.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, he\u2019s hopeful for his future.<\/p>\n
He says his grandparents survived colonialism and civil war in Sri Lanka. When his family moved to Canada, they relied on charity from groups like the Salvation Army but are now in a fairly good position.<\/p>\n
Varnacumaaran says he hopes to have a family and children of his own one day. Work hard enough, he says, and \u201cyou\u2019ll get what you want.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 With files by Craig Lord and Ritika Dubey in Toronto, Catherine Morrison in Ottawa, and Nono Shen in Vancouver<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 16, 2025.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Canadian Press has been speaking with young people about the financial challenges facing their generation \u2014 a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":{"0":"post-187293","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}