Canada’s youth are being squeezed by higher labour costs, automation, and a wave of unemployed immigrants looking for work, pushing youth unemployment sharply upward since the pandemic, according to a new report from Desjardins.
The report comes as the youth unemployment rate for Canadians aged 15 to 24 hit 14.6 percent in July, its highest level since 2010 excluding the 2020/2021 pandemic years, according to Statistics Canada. Canada’s overall unemployment rate rose to 7.1 percent last month, the highest it’s been since the spring of 2016.
“The youth unemployment rate has risen much faster than the unemployment rate for older age cohorts and is now at a level more commonly seen during a recession,” noted the Sept. 4 report co-authored by economists Kari Norman, L.J. Valencia, and Randall Bartlett….