We know from previous recessions that youth tend to experience greater levels of unemployment, but is this past recession different than the recession that hit Ontario in the 1980s and again in the early-1990s—and if so, how?
This report takes a provincial snapshot of youth employment and unemployment numbers and breaks it down by region to paint a clearer picture of where youth are still struggling to get a foothold in the labour market five years after the global economic meltdown. This report also examines youth employment and unemployment rates in other Canadian provinces, for comparative purposes.
Drawing on data from the Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey, this report analyzes the structure of the youth and adult labour force in Ontario.
Although national youth employment conditions are worse than those faced by adults, we see in Ontario an even greater divergence between adult and youth labour force conditions. By comparing both unemployment and employment rates in Canada and Ontario over time, and by looking at labour force conditions across the country as well as in different Ontario cities, a picture emerges. We can see that ongoing youth joblessness is not simply fallout from the 2008 global financial crisis. There is a strong structural component at play. This means that although adult employment conditions appear to be improving, the youth labour market remains weak despite the economic recovery. These long-term trends are occurring independent of economic boom-bust cycles. Worryingly, these structural changes to youth employment show no sign of abating—in some regions, the situation has worsened, even as the rest of the economy recovers.