The federal government is expected to fall short of their promise to deliver 5,000 green youth jobs this year.
According to an article from The Canadian Press, final numbers won’t be confirmed until fall 2017, but figures from Employment and Social Development Canada show the Liberals will surpass 2,000 green youth jobs by March 2017.
Recent Statistics Canada (StatsCan) data found that the average unemployment rate for people in the 15-24 age bracket was 13.2 per cent this past August, unchanged from the same period in 2015.
However, the unemployment rate for those 25-54 was 6.6 per cent in August. David Gray, a labour economics professor at the University of Ottawa, said this is normal for a developed country.
“Youth unemployment rate is pretty typical for it to be twice the level of the overall population,” he said.
In February, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to double the number of youth jobs available through the Canada Summer Jobs Program, which approved 77,000 jobs in June 2016.
Gray said slow economic growth may have affected the numbers.
“There were maybe 77,000 young people who did find employment thanks to Trudeau’s program, but overall the net effects on all young people seems to have been neutral,” he said. “I would attribute that to a job market which is really, pretty static at the present time.”
Gray said he isn’t sure a major job creation program, like the Canada Summer Jobs Program, will produce long-term results.
“I would like very much to see Canadian employers invest more in training all their workers,” he said.
Conservative economic development critic Alex Nuttall said StatsCan data from August showed 48,000 fewer youth were employed that month compared to last year. The population for that age group also dropped by 48,000.
“I fully support these initiatives to hire young people, but in order for us to solve this problem, we need to have a more sustainable economy, a more inclusive economy,” he said. “If you look at [the Liberals’] commitment of 40,000 new jobs and you compare it to the actual results, that means that there are 88,000 less jobs than they committed to youth across this country.”
“There’s no doubt that a downturn in the economy will have a negative impact on youth employment and that’s what we’re witnessing today,” Nuttall added. “We’ll be calling on the government to follow through on their promises to help youth.”
However, Liberal Member of Parliament Omar Alghabra said his party fulfilled their promise to double funding for youth jobs this year. He added the final numbers have yet to be released.
“I was satisfied and really happy with how these summer jobs rolled out this past summer and I’m looking forward to getting the number by the end of the year,” Alghabra said.
Makayla Peacock, a fourth-year journalism student at Carleton, said she applied to 32 different jobs this summer, most of them through the Canada Summer Jobs Program and others through an employment program offered by the Government of New Brunswick.
Peacock said she found a job through the Canada Summer Jobs program in June after two months of searching.
She said she was skeptical when she heard about Trudeau’s plan to double the funding for youth summer jobs.
“I thought they were going to only focus on bigger cities like Ottawa. . . and kind of forget about the smaller ones, because that’s what happens a lot. There’s nothing back east as far as jobs go.” Peacock said.
