Young Canadians are working significantly fewer hours today than they did 35 years ago, leading to lacklustre employment levels for those under the age of 24, a new study has found.
The median number of weekly hours worked by young Canadians has declined 16.3 percent since 1989, according to a report from the Fraser Institute.
Youth employment rates for those aged 15 to 24 not only remain below 1980s levels, they have remained well below those of the entire labour force, the study said.
“If governments want to avoid the possible lasting harms from the recent spike in Canada’s youth unemployment rate, they should help improve the labour market environment for young Canadians,” Fraser Institute senior fellow Ben Eisen said in a June 27 press release.
Even for young Canadians who are working there has been a noticeable drop in the number of hours worked, the study found. The average young employed Canadian in 1989 worked 30.7 hours per week compared to 25.7 hours in 2023—a 16.3 percent dip.
The average hours worked per week also fell from 30.9 in the 1980s to 28 in the 1990s, the study found. It decreased again in more recent years to average 25.6 hours from 2020 to 2023.
Canada’s youth unemployment rate increased from 9.7 percent to 12.6 percent from January 2023 to May 2024, the study noted.
The 3.8 percentage point decline in youth employment rates since January 2023 is only slightly smaller than the downswing during the global financial crisis from 2007 to 2010. At that time, youth employment rates fell 4.5 percentage points from a high of 60.5 to a low of 56 percent.
The economic downturn of the early 1990s and during the COVID-19 pandemic have also led to more significant downturns in the youth employment rate compared to the labour market for adults 25 and older.
“Why are these trends problematic? Because when young people obtain experience in the workforce, it can have lifelong positive effects,” the report authors wrote. “Conversely, when young people have little work experience, it can negatively affect their employment prospects and wages in adulthood.”
Young workers themselves are not the only ones who will bear the brunt of the weak youth job market. The study said that “extensive evidence” pointed to negative impacts on the labour market as a whole.
“Delayed and weak attachment to the workforce for young Canadians, both in the short- and long-term trends, can create lifelong scarring on labour market outcomes,” the authors wrote. “These trends are concerning and should be the subject of additional monitoring and research going forward.”
