Young Job Seekers to Face ‘Difficult Summer’ Labour Market: Indeed

Students make their way around the Toronto Metropolitan University campus in Toronto on April 26, 2023. The Canadian Press/Nathan Denette

Canadian students looking for work are in for a rough summer job market, according to a recent report from job posting website Indeed.

The report was authored by Brendon Bernard, senior economist at the Indeed Hiring lab. Bernard looked at the number of job ads posted on the platform that included the word “summer” and compared it to previous years’ to create a seasonal forecast.

Bernard said summer job ads have dropped 22 percent since the same time last year.

He also said that postings for common jobs for students, such as camp counsellor positions, were down 32 percent.

The report said that summer or temporary work was “catching up with the trend in overall Canadian job postings.”

“Seasonal demand held up relatively well in 2024, but is now down similarly as the overall market since 2023,” Bernard wrote.

Most years, summer job postings peak in mid-April to mid-May, according to the Indeed report.

It says one of the reasons for the drop is the decline in common summer jobs, like camp positions, which usually make up 10–15 percent of summer job postings.

Other temporary jobs, like painter or manual labour positions that can be filled by students, have also declined.

“Other jobs in recreation, including for lifeguards and instructors, also came in soft, while demand for seasonal customer service representatives likewise was down from a year earlier, matching broader trends in the retail sector,” Bernard wrote.

He said one of the other reasons for the competitive market was the increase in population growth of the young adult age group. Youth employment opportunities did not match the 7.2 percent population growth for that age group, Bernard said.

“With supply soaring past demand and limited response from wages, youth employment rates plunged,” he wrote.

In a earlier report, Bernard said that youth employment “remains weaker” than other demographics. He noted that the unemployment rate among post-secondary graduates was 11.2 percent in the first quarter of 2025. It was “highest for this period (outside of the pandemic) in more than 20 years,” he wrote.

The unemployment rate for Canadian aged 15 to 24 was 14.5 percent in April, Statistics Canada data shows.

That number was 15.4 percent in April for young men aged 15 to 24 years. It was an increase of 1.1 percentage points over March numbers, according to the Labour Force Survey.

StatCan said that the reason behind the increase was that more men in that age group were searching for work.