Youth employment shows encouraging trend
Jobs for people between the ages of 15 and 24 rose by 32,600
After Sean Bates finished up his bachelor’s degree in marketing at the University of Guelph in December, he applied to about 40 jobs in the course of two months, and got just three interviews.
The 22-year-old spent six-hours a day submitting applications online, following up via email and by phone or making cold calls.
“It was tough, it was pretty nerveracking,” Bates said. “But I had known from friends before that have been through the process ... [They] prepared me for what I was in for.”
Last month, finally, he broke through, nabbing a job as a searchengine-optimization specialist at Spark, an Internet marketing agency in Toronto.
He wasn’t alone. In fact, employment in March grew by 43,000, compared with January, largely driven by youth like Bates.
Employment for people between the ages of 15 and 24 rose by 32,600, while it was little changed for other demographic groups, according to seasonally-adjusted figures released by Statistics Canada on Friday.
It’s a glimmer of hope for a cohort which has struggled to enter the workforce, in part as baby-boomers stay in their jobs longer and Canadian economic growth slows.
Still, it’s no cause to celebrate. Youth employment levels are relatively unchanged from a year ago, and monthly jobs numbers are quite volatile, says CIBC economist Benjamin Tal.
Plus, these gains could in part be attributed to the declining quality of jobs coming onto the market often filled by youth, he added.
“I would not declare victory, and say that the youth employment problem has been resolved. Not at all,” Tal said. “Definitely an encouraging trend, an encouraging number, but not the beginning of a trend.”
Most of those youth jobs, at 19,000, were part-time, compared with 13,600 full-time positions.
It’s also not the first bump in youth jobs. In May 2013, employment in Canada among people between the ages of 15 and 24 rose by 53,000, said Andrew Fields, Statistics Canada analyst. Big surges in the past have been followed by declines the following month, said Mr. Tal.
The biggest jumps in youth employment in March were seen in British Columbia (2.7%), Quebec (2%), followed by Ontario (1.74%), and to a lesser extent New Brunswick (1%).
March was the fourth consecutive month of youth-employment gains in B.C., said StatsCan.
The jobs growth in Ontario and Quebec are, in part, a ripple effect from the recovery in the U.S., though the Canadian economy is less able to capitalize on the prosperity of our southern neighbour due to reduced capacity in our manufacturing base, said Tal. B.C., on the other hand, likely benefited from an uptick in construction industry activity and economic brightness in China.
But overall, the quality of jobs being added are eroding. CIBC’s employment index — which looks at part-time vs. full-time employment, paid-employment vs. self-employment, and the relative level of compensation associated — dropped from a rolling average of 99.21 in February to 98.21 in March.
In the early stages of the recovery, it is higher-quality jobs that return to the market and are likely filled by older, established workers who had lost them, he said. The second wave is likely what is appearing now, where lower quality jobs are being filled by young people. “To me, this suggests that the labour market is reaching a more mature cycle, where some young people are able to enter, but enter at a reduced rate in terms of quality,” Tal said.
These part-time jobs or entrylevel jobs, which should be stepping-stones to a higher-paying career roles, are becoming dead ends for many young people, said Nancy Schaefer, president of Youth Employment Services in Toronto.