Canada’s top budget watchdog is sounding the alarm over soaring youth unemployment, warning that postsecondary students shut out of early work experience risk lower lifetime earnings and weaker attachment to the labour force.Blacklock's Reporter says Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer Jason Jacques told the Senate national finance committee that failing to land a first job — especially one tied to a student’s field of study — can have lasting economic consequences. While stressing it is not his office’s role to weigh in on government policy, Jacques said academic research consistently shows how early career setbacks can echo for decades.“If you are not able to find that first job or find a first job related to your studies, chances are your attachment to the labour force writ large over your lifetime and certainly your lifetime earnings will be lower,” Jacques testified.Statistics Canada’s latest Labour Force Survey, released January 9, put unemployment among student-age jobseekers at 13.3%, roughly double the national rate of 6.8%. For Canadians aged 15 to 24, joblessness climbed even higher in several provinces, hitting 14.5% in Alberta, 15% in Saskatchewan, 15.6% in Ontario and a staggering 19.1% in Newfoundland and Labrador.Ontario Sen. Andrew Cardozo said the data points to a worsening crisis. “From what I am seeing, we have a growing youth unemployment crisis,” he told the committee..Cardozo also questioned the federal Canada Summer Jobs program, which offers wage subsidies of up to 50% for employers hiring students, sometimes for as little as eight weeks. A 2026 employers’ guide says the program aims to fund positions lasting about eight weeks at 35 hours per week.“There will be jobs for 100,000 but only for eight weeks,” Cardozo said. Jacques replied that his office is closely tracking the figures, noting youth unemployment last summer never dropped below 14.2%.The shortened job duration has already drawn criticism from Conservatives, who accuse Ottawa of padding employment numbers by splitting summer work into shorter stints. “They’re going to have jobs for half the summer,” Conservative MP Garnett Genuis said during a Commons committee hearing last November.“When the government shortens the duration of these jobs, it looks like you’re trying to artificially show a high number of jobs created,” Genuis argued, adding most students and employers would prefer full-summer employment.Labour Minister Patty Hajdu has defended the approach, telling MPs the program would still support about 100,000 students next summer, including nearly 35,000 additional participants, even if many placements last only eight weeks.
