Age-old challenge
StatsCan study highlights drop in wages, job quality for young workers
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 refocused attention on the federal government’s push to create jobs for youth.
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 refocused attention on the federal government’s push to create jobs for youth.
The review of decades of employment figures found 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 age 25 and older.
In the report released Monday, 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 expert panel on youth employment has been hearing during its 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 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 Statistics Canada 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 age 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.