Labour inflows one likely factor in this summer's high youth unemployment rate
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It’s been about a year since Immigration Minister Marc Miller took up his post at Canada’s gates with promises to bring the flow of newcomers down to manageable levels, and the situation has only gotten worse.
In 2023 alone, 1.3 million people came to the country, growing the population by 3.2 per cent — that’s more than three times as seen in the United States. It’s a rate that would have been hard to fathom years ago: temporary foreign workers are up sevenfold since 2000, as is the international student population. Once on a gentle rise, the numbers took off in 2015, and became especially steep after the COVID pandemic.
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It’s the country’s youth who are particularly squished by the squeeze.
The banks, at least, have turned some attention to the poor tidings that population inflows have brought Canada’s youth. In April, Scotiabank economist Derek Holt noted that the previous month saw youth jobs drop by about 28,000. It may not have been as noticeable (sub-25s aren’t as tied to housing and consumer markets, our economist explains), but he raised a few possible explanations anyway.
It could have been that spring break’s particular odd timing with data collection could have exaggerated numbers, Holt suggested — or, perhaps, recent surges in temporary residents “left fewer openings for youths to fill in terms of seasonal March break related employment.”
“If so, then what happens to the youths category going forward partly depends upon whether the feds are successful in pushing........