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Week 1: Insights into Supporting Youth
Editorial by Christian Saint Cyr
National Director / Canadian Job Development Network
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Youth have always experienced more barriers within the labour market. Not only do they often lack a network, experience, education and training, but they also fall into many other groups who are under-represented in the labour market such as immigrants, those with disabilities, racialized Canadians, women and Indigenous Canadians. To further complicate this, employers are typically more resistant to hire youth under 24 because they lack experience and have yet to develop their work ethic.
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It's for these reasons the unemployment rate for youth has typically been twice the unemployment rate of the rest of the population, no matter the circumstances. During the early days of the pandemic when the unemployment rate was north of 13 percent, youth were maintaining an unemployment rate of 20-25 percent. In 2022, when the unemployment rate was nearly five percent, the youth unemployment rate was nearly 10 percent.
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Also, this has nothing to do with school or youth being students. When we calculate the unemployment rate for any population, people are asked outright, 'are you looking for work right now?' and this is the number of youth who say they are looking for work.
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We now have research that illustrates this is getting more challenging.
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Over the past 15 months, Canada’s previously tight labour market has softened considerably. The slowdown in the youth labour market has been particularly significant. From January 2023 to May 2024, the youth unemployment rate (15–24) rose from 9.7 to 12.6 percent. Meanwhile, the youth employment rate fell from 59.4 to 55.6 percent.
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There are lots of reasons for this. Part of it is that employers are busy and looking for people to be ready to start on day one with little training. This not only negatively impacts youth but every other population that needs a little extra support when starting a new job.
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Another factor is that employers are increasingly looking to temporary foreign workers to fill entry-level jobs, believing international workers are more reliable, committed or they are more hard-working than young people.
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They may be right! Historically, small businesses have played an important role in mentoring youth to understand the expectations and the adult responsibilities of employment. This was true of restaurants, retail establishments, hotels, entertainment venues, landscapers, transportation and construction companies. Young people today may have many of the same attitudes as previous generations, but they're not getting the same mentorship opportunities to demonstrate to employers they are refining their expectations.
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How many of us have heard that McDonald's looks pretty good on a resume -- that was true for most of us growing up and yet we read more and more about McDonald's franchisees who are hiring dozens of temporary foreign workers and housing them in dorm-like buildings.
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I've heard directly from employers that youth are unreliable, inflexible, they have a poor attitude, they don't understand what is expected of them and they don't want to work.
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And while this is true of some youth, it's not all youth and employers are routinely ignoring resumes and applications.
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Furthermore, for many of these employers, if the temporary foreign worker program disappeared tomorrow -- what would they do? Would they shut down their business and go home or would they make the accommodations and provide the support necessary to grow and cultivate a domestic workforce?
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According to a new report from the Fraser Institute titled, 'Recent Trends in Youth Employment', longer-term trends show that youth employment and participation rates have consistently remained worse than those of the broader labour force since the late 1980s. For those who compare their own work experience from the early 2000s, 1990s and 1980s, employment for youth today is considerably harder.
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While the cost of living is quite a bit higher today, the access to full-time employment, benefits and predictable employment is much worse now. The median number of hours worked for young Canadians who are employed has fallen by 16.3 percent since the end of the 1980s.
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According to this report, "evidence shows that delayed and weak attachment to the workforce for young Canadians, both in the short- and long-term trends, can create lifelong scarring on labour market outcomes. These trends are concerning and should be the subject of additional monitoring and research going forward."
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If the primary group you are working with is youth, addressing this systemic prejudice towards youth requires a two-pronged approach.
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It's exceptionally hard to point out an employer's prejudice, much less get them to modify it.
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In developing training for youth, it's critical to spend a great deal of time discussing employer expectations. This might be as straight forward is preferred resume styles and typical interview questions but can also delve down to typical pet-peeves. Employers are frustrated by applicants that provide very little availability; who are inflexible; those who don't respond to voice messages; applicants who dress inappropriately; and those who seem judgmental or opinionated.
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A lot of these issues can be addressed through role-playing and group observation. Let other youth in the group look for the red-flags and point them out in a role-playing exercise.
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It's also extremely valuable to get as much employer input as possible. Try to get youth-friendly employers to meet with youth in a group or invite them into the workplace for a tour.
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Social media and the information overload many youth receive these days, makes young people suspicious of employers and having a frank dialogue or helping youth understand employer expectation can go far to breaking down many of these biases.
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The prong on the employer side is more subtle. No employer is going to be open to 'you have to hire youth' or 'it's your responsibility to hire youth'. This is likely to further entrench these attitudes. Instead, employers should be subtly marketed with the strengths youth provide -- that they can learn technological systems faster; they will respond to positive mentorship; and that an enthusiastic young employee can make a positive contribution for years to come.
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While I've found no employer likes to be told the 'have' to accommodate youth; I believe employers would be more open to the argument that employers have historically provided strong leadership to young workers and we have an opportunity to establish your business as a leader in developing young workers.
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With young workers, communication is going to be the key issue in the first few months of employment. It will take young people a while to understand employer expectations and it will take a savvy job developer to help finesse issues and calm down both sides before a reciprocal relationship develops between the employer and the candidate.
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We’ll be discussing the contribution youth can make at our #MotivatingMondays meeting of the Canadian Job Development Network, Tuesday July 2nd at 8:30am Pacific; 9:30am Mountain; 10:30am Central; 11:30am Eastern; 12:30pm Atlantic and at 1pm in Newfoundland.
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We're no longer using the Motivating Mondays URL to connect due to security concerns. Instead we're hosting the sessions on a new Teams Link we share in this newsletter each week. On the morning of Tuesday July 2nd, 'Click this Link' to join the session LIVE.
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