The Hamilton Spectator

Study highlights drop in job quality for youth

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OTTAWA — A new study from Statistics Canada about the precarious position young workers find themselves in — and how little it has changed in four decades — has refocussed attention on the federal government’s push to create jobs for youth.

The review of decades of employment figures found that young people have seen their job quality decline over 40 years, even as the unemployme­nt rate has remained relatively unchanged: The youth unemployme­nt rate in both 1976 and 2015 was 2.3 times higher than the rate among those aged 25 and older.

In the report, the national statistics office said fewer young Canadians, who are not full-time students, are working in full-time jobs today than in 1976, a result driven mainly by the rise of part-time work rather than increases in unemployme­nt rates or decreases in labour force participat­ion.

The numbers mirror what the panel on youth employment has been hearing during their work.

Vass Bednar, who chairs the panel, says she has heard issues ranging from the role of government­s at all levels in job creation, to the changing business landscape that gives rise to more part-time and temporary work and workers who worry that putting their home address on an applicatio­n may show them to be from a poorer part of town and dissuade employers from hiring them.

The special panel is scheduled to provide an interim report to Labour Minister MaryAnn Mihychuk at the end of the week. A final report is due by March and is expected to help the government chart a path forward on the issue.

“There are going to be ideas in our final report that are not just for the federal government, because this is not just for the federal government to solve,” Bednar said. “Let’s make sure people are having positive, early experience­s with work that get them excited, that fulfil them, that make them energized, that make them productive so they can fully participat­e in life, in the economy.”

The study said people under age 25 who were employed full time have seen their wages fall behind the cost of living since the early 1980s. Male workers aged 17 to 24 saw the buying power of their salaries — known as the “real hourly wages” — drop by about 15 per cent, while women in the same group experience­d a 10 per cent drop.

Growth years between 2004 and 2009, when housing boomed along with oil prices and more young men went to work in Alberta’s oilpatch, couldn’t make up for the losses in real wages that young people have experience­d, the report said.

Conservati­ve youth critic Rachael Harder said the federal Liberals should be investing in the oil and gas sector and building pipelines, two of which the government approved last week. That, along with giving young people more lucrative loans to get a post-secondary education, are two things the federal government could do to boost job numbers, she said.

NDP youth critic Niki Ashton said the government should look at ending unpaid internship­s and ease the debt load students carry out of school.

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