Canadian Youth Struggle as Foreign Workers Surge

The Canadian job market is under a significant disconnect; it is running out of reach for the student and fresh graduate level into entry jobs, notwithstanding that the country is continuing to import a huge amount of temporary foreign workers. This imbalance is greatly contributing to a sharp rise in youth employment, making a sizeable steady percentage leave many young Canadians struggling for work. “I was really struggling. I was on Indeed, scouring everywhere—asking friends and everything—nothing,” said Eze, a recent graduate still searching for her first job. “That was really demoralizing because I had the firm determination, but I was seeing no results.”. Eze’s experience is anything but rare.

Youth Job Crisis

The softening economy in Canada has increasingly made it difficult for young Canadians to get on their feet once they graduate, while the government brings in literally hundreds of thousands of temporary foreign workers within food and retail industries.

This trend worsens the crisis of youth unemployment, whereby the rate of those jobless aged 15-24 reaches 14.2%, at its highest level in more than 10 years, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic.

The situation is much worse for those immigrants who have come to Canada in the last half-decade. Its unemployment has shot up to about 23%, showing all the tough struggles breaking into the Canadian labor market.

A recent Bloomberg News analysis looks at the explosive growth of temporary foreign workers into Canada’s food and retail sectors over the past five years, with the number of approved temporary workers in the two sectors bounding up by 211% from 2019 to 2023. The surge of temporary foreign workers arrives at the very moment when the job market all but closes out many young Canadians from even their first job, as poor Eze has demonstrated. It also highlights an incremental feature of a labor market full of missed matches: some of the needed workers and others desperately in need of the jobs that recent immigrants and young people might do. The growing rate of unemployment among the youth is an immense challenge that Canada faces, not only with a view to ensuring economic stability but also in ensuring long-term career prospects and future earnings for the country’s young generation. These changes that the changing job markets have brought about still hang in the balance for the needful policy response.