COVID-19 has changed the Canadian job landscape. While businesses struggle to continue running amidst restrictions, many students say finding a job has never been harder.
Statistics Canada data shows the unemployment rate for young people in Canada, those aged 15 to 24, is higher than pre-pandemic levels, with females down 11.8 per cent and males down 8.9 per cent.
Many Carleton students are among those facing financial insecurity due to the pandemic.
Balancing finances and education
Hannah Heidrich, a third-year Carleton psychology student, was out of work for over a year.
Heidrich used to work at the Ottawa Hospital as a patient care assistant, but quit when the demands of being a student and working full-time became too hard to balance.
When COVID-19 hit, she tried to find summer jobs, part-time work and remote opportunities—all without success.
“I knew that due to COVID that I couldn’t work, but it was hard because as a student, I knew it was going to financially affect me,” Heidrich said.
She added being unable to find a job for the majority of the summer affected her self-esteem, but she eventually was hired as a customer service representative at a ski resort in the fall, which boosted her confidence. She has since been temporarily laid off because of the second lockdown.
“I can’t work until we know anything about outdoor recreation until after lockdown at least,” she said.
Tania Zhang, a fourth-year Carleton criminology and criminal justice student, has also been unemployed due to COVID-19. She was furloughed from her retail job of four years in March.
“I’m currently doing unpaid internships to help build up my resume and hopefully get a job,” she said.
In June and July, Zhang said she was given two options by her retail employer: termination or being rehired with lower wages and reduced hours. She decided to return to her job, even though she now only works three to four hours instead of full-time.
She said providing more income to support her mother, who also lost her job as a housekeeper due to the pandemic, was a large factor in the decision.
“A decrease in pay wouldn’t have been that bad had I still been working eight-hour shifts, but because of the pay cut and the decreased hours, I’m making so little money at my job,” she said.
Megan Strahl, a third-year Carleton English student, lost her job of six years at the Glebe Community Centre in March, but was rehired in June. She said losing her job was difficult for her largely because she was very close with her colleagues.
“They said, ‘We deeply regret having to do this, we’ll hire you back as soon as possible’ and thankfully we [stayed] connected,” she said.
She added that she still volunteered at the centre over the summer to keep herself busy, even though she wasn’t getting paid.
Although Strahl said she went back to work when schools reopened in September, she hasn’t been able to work since schools shut down for the extended lockdown in Ontario.
“I still have a job, but seeing the second wave hit and the rising cases is a little bit concerning,” she said.
Widespread economic impacts
Hashmat Khan is a Carleton professor of economics and the director of the Centre for Monetary and Financial Economics. He said the unemployment situation Carleton students described is not uncommon.
“The loss of income for both agents in the sense of households and firms has been the biggest financial impact on the economy,” Khan said.
Statistics Canada reports 36.5 per cent of businesses in Canada have laid off at least one employee. Of those that laid off employees, 64.3 per cent laid off more than half of their employees, and only 53.8 per cent of businesses that laid off workers reported hiring back half or more of their workforce.
Gina Vacchio, owner and operator of Little Sisterz, a small Italian restaurant in Spencerville, Ont., is one of the lucky businesses in the country. She said she has not laid off any employees as a result of the pandemic.
Her restaurant, which celebrated its two-year anniversary in March, closed for some months to follow public health guidelines.
“We closed down our dining room and started to plan on how could we continue to move forward and still be as operational [as we were before],” she said.
She said her biggest challenge is keeping on top of everything needed to follow protocols while managing a business. She has applied for business grants and said she has received one so far.
“They change the rules on a regular basis. There are days that I feel like I am in information overload. I can’t keep up with everything that’s coming across my emails or my platforms,” she said.
Despite the challenges, Vacchio said the bureaucratic work is worthwhile.
“It’s really challenging to find the time to read, investigate, apply, put the documents in order,” she said. “It’s very time consuming, but it’s an investment to keep us going—to keep my team going.”
Khan said the pandemic’s biggest impact on businesses is the reduced demand for services, leading to reduced cash flow. While there is some heightened demand during reopening phases, he said it may not be enough for small businesses to cover all of their fixed costs, which could lead to eventual closures.
“The demand has collapsed for many businesses,” Khan said. “If they are not able to cover their fixed costs, that means the overall profit is not going to be sufficient to sustain them in the long term. So, my concern is we would see a lot of small businesses closing down.”
While there is no official count on the number of businesses that have closed permanently due to COVID-19, some Ottawa cafes and restaurants have already announced permanent closures as a result of the pandemic. Statistics Canada reported the number of active businesses in September was about seven per cent lower than in February 2020.
How inequities are exacerbating wage gaps
The federal government has announced various financial aid programs to help businesses and individuals during the pandemic.
Zhang received Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) payments, which she said have been getting her through the year, but she worries about having to pay some of it back come tax season. With most of her income pre-pandemic going to her tuition, she said she had little to begin with.
Income received through CERB is part of taxable income for 2020, according to the Canada Revenue Agency. Individuals who received the benefit are expected to pay taxes on it.
Zhang also expressed frustration that her mother, who doesn’t speak English, didn’t receive equal government support.
“I was receiving more money in CERB payments than my mom, because she wasn’t qualified,” she said. “It’s not fair that a student like me, who is a little bit more privileged—who speaks English, who has a [post-]secondary education—could get more money than my mom who is in more need.”
Khan said he was concerned that COVID-19 could make pre-existing, long-term inequalities between high-income and low-income households worse in Canada. Many jobs with lower wages are contingent on interpersonal contact, while higher income households often have the ability to work from home and reduce COVID-19 risk.
“Lower income households … they have to run down their savings and at the same time, the higher income households have accumulated savings because they’re traveling less, spending less,” he said.
Familial support
Others struggling financially during the pandemic have turned to family members rather than the government for help. Strahl and Heidrich said their families supported them during the first wave of the pandemic.
For Strahl, using her savings and keeping her expenses low helped her during the summer, as well as support from her parents, who pay her rent while she’s in school.
“My parents are super supportive and they made it very clear that if I was ever in any sort of need that they would be there for me,” she said. “I consider myself lucky to be on the more privileged side, in that I was able to get my job back and have been able to work ever since.”
Heidrich moved back home from Ottawa in March, which she said is helping her get through the pandemic.
“My family is very supportive, so I’m very lucky to have financial and emotional support that I can still be a happy and content student studying online during these hard times,” she said.
For Vacchio, running a business during the pandemic has taken a toll. She is a caregiver for her 90-year-old mother, so she said she is very cautious about following distancing and isolation rules to lower her chance of catching COVID-19.
Vacchio explained that to protect community members at the beginning of the pandemic, businesses in Spencerville, Ont. put together care packages with food, cleaning products, and hard-to-find items such as toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
She added that she wishes she had more time for self-care.
“Every area of my life is exhausting right now. I have very little time for myself and my body is feeling it, my mental health is feeling it,” she said. “I wish I had more financial relief so I could [take care of myself] more effectively.”
Businesses of the future
Khan predicts many businesses will move towards labour-saving technologies after the pandemic. He said jobs which are cognitive and non-routine have a higher chance of surviving COVID-19.
“New graduates [that] are coming with education, we would expect that the jobs that they are seeking are more in the cognitive, and perhaps non-routine category, those kinds of jobs might still be quite secure,” he said.
Some students say they are adapting their career goals in light of the COVID-19’s economic impact on the job market.
“I get a little bit scared for my career, because usually with law it is considered a stable career or a career that is guaranteed,” Zhang said.
“But I think right now, because of everything changing, I’m not sure how possible it is to get a job right after I finish my degree. It’s definitely changing the areas that I want to work with, which is kind of sad.”
Heidrich said she has similar concerns about finding a job related to her field of study, especially because she has found there are less resume-building opportunities during the pandemic.
“In my program I don’t think there would be any [related jobs] I could probably find, even the job [available] right now doesn’t really relate to my program,” she said.
Though this year has not gone as expected, Vacchio said she intends to see the five- to 10-year business plan she wrote for the restaurant through to its end.
“I want to see it flourish in the way that I dreamed it up,” she said. “I’m really proud of everything I’ve accomplished thus far … and that’s not an easy thing for me to say out loud.”
Featured image by Spencer Colby.
