The youth unemployment rate (ages 15 – 24) has risen to 13.5%, nearly double the national average. That number however does not tell the entire story. It does not tell of the young people who left the job seekers pool to go back to school. It also doesn’t track those young people working as unpaid interns. Many young people emerge from a university or college program to find employers just aren’t hiring. Instead they go back to school to work on a second (or sometimes third) degree or take an unpaid internship. According to the Centre for Policy Alternatives‘s report The Young and the Jobless only 43.5% of Toronto youth actually have jobs. Meaning 56.5% of youth are not participating in the job market at all. This is the lowest rate of youth employment in the country.
This leaves young people at a position where they cannot properly participate in the economy except to move further and further into debt taking additional courses, hoping that someone will hire them when they finish. How did this happen? What has the federal government done to help get these young people to work and get our economy moving? Many people point to various problems in the labour market as to why youth unemployment is so high. Two commonly cited reasons are below.
Temporary Foreign Workers
The TFW program was created to help companies bring in skilled workers from abroad when they could not find those workers and skills in their local market. Under Stephen Harper the use of this program has exploded . Nearly 500,000 temporary foreign workers were present in Canada at the end of 2012. Note the use of foreign workers actually increased during a time of recession when unemployment was actually increasing.
Could the government have done more to help match employers with the workers they so badly needed? TFWs can seemingly be hired to do everything from mining to fast food work. We’ve heard of stories of restaurants hiring TFWs to work in kitchens or even work as wait staff. The program is widely used in Alberta where the unemployment rate is one of the lowest in Canada. However the province with the highest number of TFWs is Ontario where the unemployment rate earlier this year was 7.3%. We need a nuanced and balanced position when it comes to dealing with Temporary Foreign Workers that will balance the needs of companies struggling to fill positions and unemployed Canadians looking for work.
Unpaid Internships
Some organizations estimate there may be as many as 300,000 unpaid interns in Canada (2). The lack of federal labour market data makes it impossible to know the precise number according to Claire Seaborn, head of the Canadian Intern Association.(3) Young people who cannot find work are being told to work for free. This comment comes from Stephen Poloz, Governor of the Bank of Canada.
There are currently more unpaid internships in Canada than there are in the UK, a country with almost twice the population as Canada’s.
A study performed by the Canadian Intern Association showed that most people working at unpaid internships were women. The study reported some young people claiming to work more than 50 hours per week without compensation nevermind overtime. It even spoke about young people being denied references if they refused the overtime.
There are currently more unpaid internships in Canada than there are in the UK, a country with almost twice the population as Canada’s.
We Need Action
The government of Canada needs to act now to make it easier for young people to find work. We need to stop allowing companies to abuse the Temporary Foreign Worker program and we need to take a good hard look at how internships function in this country. Are our young people being served by them, or are they being taken advantage of by them?
