Students are finding that many of their usual sources of summer work have dried up due to pandemic restrictions on business activity. Statistics Canada is expected to deliver a bleak jobs report on Friday.
Adam Brown lined up a job in March with a consulting firm in Edmonton. He just started there this week.
He counts himself among the lucky ones — luckier than many of his friends whose summer-job options, like those of so many students, have been hard-hit ever since pandemic-related restrictions took hold in March.
Statistics Canada reported the youth employment rate dropped to 49 per cent at the outset of the pandemic, the lowest rate since comparable data began being gathered in 1976, and the unemployment rate (the proportion actively looking for work and unable to find it) hit 16.8 per cent, the highest mark since June 1997.
Job prospects may be different for different students, Brown said, depending what they’re studying.
But “most students are still probably having difficulties locking down jobs,” said Brown, the outgoing chair of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations.
“We’ll have to see as the summer progresses if job markets are actually going to open with more availability for students. Because the service industry in particular, I think, is going to take a lot longer to get back on its feet.”
Grim jobs report expected
On Friday, Statistics Canada will report preliminary jobs figures