Canada’s youth stuck competing for early career experience in a crowded labour market

Lauren Hood poses for a photograph in Toronto on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette (Nathan Denette)

Four months, 50 applications, two interviews, no job.

The story of 21-year-old political studies graduate Lauren Hood might sound familiar to others in her generation.

“In my mind, after completing the four years and getting my degree, I didn’t think it would be as challenging as it’s proven to have been,” she said of the job market.

Hood, who has lived with her parents in Aurora, Ont., since graduation, recalled applying for a job she thought perfectly matched her qualifications. The company had to close the application portal early, with more than 450 resumes submitted, she said.

Even jobs she feels she’s more than qualified for — restaurant server or retail positions — have been hard to come by.

Fielding rejections has been hard, and applying has started to seem futile, Hood said.

“I feel behind, even though I just graduated,” she said.

“I don’t really have stability in my life or even a schedule,” she said. “For me, I just go day by day, and it’s really stressful.”

Many young people who spoke to The Canadian Press recognize that disillusionment — a waning belief that hard work will result in the quality of life their parents and grandparents were able to secure.

Today’s young workers say they’re struggling to get ahead in a job market lacking opportunity and an economy where rising prices are boxing them out of the ways society previously marked adulthood.

Youth unemployment hit 14.7 per cent in September, a 15-year high outside the COVID-19 pandemic years, Statistics Canada said. Jobs for young workers started ticking higher in October and November, but employment levels remained marginally above lows recorded over the summer.

Career prospects for young workers have been declining for years.

StatCan said that in 1989, nearly 80 per cent of workers aged 15 to 30 had full-time, permanent jobs. Thirty years later, in 2019, it had fallen to roughly 70 per cent. And five years after that, less than 60 per cent were in full-time, steady employment.

Canada’s economy is under pressure right now from U.S. tariffs and trade uncertainty, reining in hiring demand. Many economists say youth and other vulnerable Canadians are typically among the first to feel the crunch when job postings dry up.

“That’s a lot of what we saw this summer ... those companies that would have been big employers were just not there,” said economist Kari Norman, one of the authors of a Desjardins report on youth unemployment published in September.

Desjardins found the sharp rise in youth unemployment is more typical of a Canadian recession, not the more modest type of downturn the country seems to be facing.

One explanation offered for the imbalance has been population growth. The federal government opened immigration taps to let in more foreign workers and international students to meet businesses’ fierce demand for labour after the pandemic, Norman said.

Ottawa has since tempered the flow of newcomers, which Norman said would help rebalance job prospects in the long-run. But for now, youth are stuck competing for early career experience in a crowded labour market.

Artificial intelligence is also increasingly being used to do the kinds of entry-level tasks that previously got young workers their first jobs. Norman said that’s leaving a gap between starter roles and those that require a few years on the job.

“How do you get those first five years of experience?” she asked.

Post-pandemic ‘economic scarring’

Osobe Waberi found the answer to that question beyond Canada’s borders.

When the rent for her shared downtown Toronto apartment climbed $500 a month, Waberi was dejected.

Waberi, who had lived in Toronto for a decade and saw the affordability crisis unfold, said her full-time job couldn’t keep up with the rent hike and the high cost of living in a metropolitan city.

“It just didn’t feel like I could grow anymore in the city that I love,” she said.

She moved to Oman earlier this year on a two-year permit. The Middle East country offered what she was seeking — a better opportunity to fast-track her savings while providing a chance to start a public relations firm catering to Canadian clients.

Waberi said she wants to return to Toronto eventually and make the city her home again.

“I love Toronto, it is home, and I’m definitely homesick. But I was more sick of paying the rent,” she said.

Data from Generation Squeeze, a non-profit focused on levelling the playing field for Canada’s young people, suggest it’s much harder for them to get a foot on the property-ownership ladder than it was for their parents.

In 1986, it took five years for the typical 25-34-year-old to save for a 20 per cent down payment on the representative home in Canada, according to the organization’s calculations. By 2021, that figure stood at 17 years nationally and even higher at 27 years in the greater Vancouver and Toronto areas.

Generation Squeeze CEO Paul Kershaw said the time needed to save for a home reversed course in recent years, down to nearly 14 years in 2024, amid a stalled housing market and lower interest rates.

But home prices would still need to decline sharply from this point if younger Canadians want the same shot at home ownership afforded to earlier generations, he said.

Lisa Taylor, founder of the Challenge Factory, a consultancy firm focused on the future of work, said youth faced “economic scarring” after the pandemic.

Restrictions on in-person work meant many missed out on critical face-to-face experiences needed to build professional networks earlier in their careers, she said.

But Taylor also said the economic challenges facing Canada’s youth could be a reflection not of lost hope, but of shifting timelines.

Many are staying in school longer and by extension are entering the labour force later, getting married later and buying a home when they have access to the traditional dual-income household.

“Is Gen Z screwed? Or is it just that they’re taking longer to achieve the different milestones that we have this idea should be happening sooner.”

Norman said she sees the impact of the tough job market at home with four of her children between the ages of 16 and 25. One, a university student who couldn’t land a co-op placement over the summer, took extra courses between semesters to offset the lost experience.

Students who can’t find work before or after graduation might also stay in school longer, Norman said, and increasingly rely on debt to fund their education.

“They will ultimately end up graduating with more debt than they otherwise would have had, and that’s something that can stay with young adults for many years after graduation,” she said.

A few weeks after speaking to The Canadian Press the first time, Hood’s luck started to turn around. While interviewing for a retail gig at her local mall, she received an offer on the spot to start working at a store.

The job is seasonal, doesn’t offer benefits and isn’t part of her long-term career aspirations.

But at the moment, the relief of a paycheque is more than enough for Hood.

“I am still very grateful to have the chance to get back to work.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 16, 2025.

Craig Lord and Ritika Dubey, The Canadian Press