the impacts of economic recession to undergraduates’ job finding opportunities
Many high-skill job opportunities remain unfilled, yet university graduates, as well as undergraduates, find it hard to find work in Canada. Currently, Canada has around 1.33 million workers who are unemployed, yet in 2012, business hired over 338,000 temporary foreign workers, claiming there are shortages in low-skilled jobs.
The major reason for this is the shortage or mismatch of skills among the young university graduates which has led to the increase of the gap between the skills required by Canadian employers and the skills provided by job seekers.
Economists, as well as news reports, have reported the last economic recession in 2008 as the major factor that accelerated contingent labour force rise including contract, part-time and self-employed workers. It has become a worry on whether the Canadian economy is creating enough jobs to ensure labour participation to the maximum for the students as well as the older workers who prefer such jobs.
Increasing participation of youths in the labour force has raised concern in Canada as a result of the rising levels of youth unemployment. Canada has been proven historically to have a mobile labour force, however, the youths lack the willingness to go where there are jobs, which greatly reduces the efficiency of the labour market in Canada.
The regional employment imbalance is not likely to change anytime soon considering the fact that employers in Canada currently do not consider today’s youths to be reasonable substitutes for the older workers after retirement simply because they lack the right skills showing that the Canadian post-secondary education system is not effectively serving the labour market (Donaldson, 2016).
