How UW students are navigating the rough job market

Smriti Sharma is a computer science major in her fourth year, minoring in statistics and economics. She decided to drop out of the co-op program in April after completing four different co-ops throughout her university career. 

It was not an easy choice to make, as she wanted to graduate with her friends and explore opportunities in future co-op terms. With four co-op terms completed, she only had two more terms to complete. She was not happy with the job offers she received, and found the co-op search discouraging. 

“The co-op search itself wasn’t very positive, per se,” Sharma noted. “The companies that were interesting — they had 1,200 or 1,300 applications. Bloomberg for example, they had over 100 people interviewing for one software position, which was ridiculous. Then the other companies, if there weren’t over 1,000 people applying, even then, it was still a long, tedious process.”

Throughout her university career, Sharma used WaterlooWorks, Linkedin, Indeed, and personal connections to land co-op jobs. Her previous jobs have included working at Loblaws, Amazon, a consulting firm, and a fintech company. Her work concerned automation, data engineering, machine learning engineering, and software engineering. 

She added that the quality and quantity of jobs has also declined since she started her studies.

“What I’ve noticed is a lot of people are doing an external search or going back to their previous employers due to the quality of WaterlooWorks,” Sharma said. “That’s one thing I noticed — everyone’s just going back. No one is really happy with the jobs that they see.”

Many people she knows are following suit, including three of her past roommates, one majoring in psychology, another in computer science, and another in biomedical sciences. 

Her current plan after graduation is to return full time at her previous company — Amazon in Vancouver — as a software developer.

Manaswinee Gupta is a computer science major in her third year. She began job searching for her fourth co-op term in the fall as of May 4. WaterlooWorks is her main job search tool, and she has applied to 50 jobs as of writing this article. 

“It’s the first cycle, so I’m still using WaterlooWorks more, but as it progresses, I’ll probably shift to external applications,” she said.

The past co-op terms have included roles at Ford Motors as a software tester and an Android developer. She is now aiming to get a co-op in machine learning. 

The job search experience has been mixed over the years. “The first time I was applying for co-op, it was so good. I got the job so easily, but then later on, it started getting worse,” Gupta said, adding that the search this term has been more positive so far, with better options. 

“I feel like finding a job is fine — but getting into what you want is more difficult,” she said. “I have experience in Android development, so I think at this point, I can find an Android development job, but that’s not what I want.”

Expert opinion: What is contributing to a rough job market?

Mikal Skuterad is a UW economics professor and director of the Canadian Labour Economics Forum. He noted that in recent months, the data is pointing to deteriorating labour market conditions for young people. This is evident more so when viewing statistics for falling employment rates, rather than the relatively steady unemployment rates.

The employment rate measures the percentage of people who are of working age (15 and older) and are employed. The unemployment rate measures the percentage of people within the labour force that do not have a job and are actively seeking employment. 

“What those two things imply is that more and more young people are just not participating in markets. They’re sort of saying, ‘Well, I’m not going to work,’” Skuterad said. 

A Labour Force Survey by Statistics Canada published in April 2024 noted that employment among youth aged 15 to 24 fell by 28,000 (-1 per cent) in March, continuing a trend that has seen virtually no net employment growth among youth since December 2022.

This data does not take into account the massive growth in the non-permanent resident population, Skuterad said. “There’s been this incredible growth, and most of that growth, by far, has been foreign students,” he said, adding that these students are unlikely to be sampled and represented in this data.

As of January 1 this year, Canada’s population reached 40,769,890, an increase of 1,271,872 people compared to January 1, 2023. This marked the highest population growth rate (3.2 per cent) in Canada since 1957 (3.3 per cent). The majority (97.6 per cent) of this growth came from international migration, and the rest came from natural increase.

As a result, domestic students seeking part-time jobs off-campus or those looking for summer jobs have to compete with foreign students for jobs, with more candidates competing for job vacancies.

“Anecdotally, I know people who run businesses in Kitchener-Waterloo who tell me that the absolute best employees, if you’re looking for low wage workers to do any kind of unskilled work — whether in a factory or cleaning dishes in a restaurant — the people you should be looking to fill those jobs are foreign students, which are from Conestoga College, not the University of Waterloo,” Skuterad said.

These workers have motivation to work hard so that they can get permanent residency in the country, he added. “We take that for granted because we’re permanent residents, but we’re so lucky to live in Canada. So understandably, other people in the world that come from poorer countries want to have that luck. So they come here and they’re willing to work really hard, and they know the pathway to permanent residency.”

The consequences of getting fired can be worse for foreign students, for example, losing the chance of permanent residency. 

He added that there has been a narrative put out there about a labour shortage in Canada but this does not appear to be the case when viewing labour statistics. “There’s a perception that businesses like to push that there’s not enough workers, but if you look at the data, it just doesn’t hold up,” Skuterad said. 

Centre for Career Development: Tips and tricks for finding a co-op

The Centre for Career Development (CCD) supports undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and alumni in their career endeavours. They offer one-on-one appointments, available both virtual and in-person, as well as resume reviews, cover letter tailoring, workshops on online presence management, and career planning. 

The CCD has seen an increased use over the past several years, with 25,201 student engagements in 2023, compared to 22,362 in 2022. 

Stephanie Bailey is a career advisor at the CCD who started the role about a year-and-a-half ago. She noticed that students have been struggling to find work, and that it is a reflection of a dip in the economy.

“Since I started at CCD, ChatGPT came out of nowhere,” Bailey noted. “So these larger trends, I feel like, have created a sense of anxiety. There’s all these big changes, there’s a growing understanding of how the world of work has changed so dramatically from our parents’ generation, and that maybe some of the models of how to approach work no longer fit because of what we call a ‘VUCA’ world.”

The acronym VUCA, which stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, is used to describe a new world of work that is constantly changing based on larger factors such as climate change, the rise of automation and artificial intelligence, globalization, and the rise of polarized social and political movements. 

“The one thing we know for certain is that things will be uncertain,” Bailey said. “So how can you develop skills that will help you adapt to this incredibly volatile world of work? Part of that, so much, is about resiliency, anticipating roadblocks in your career and coming up with strategies on how to overcome them when they inevitably crop up.” 

The world of work will be evolving constantly in the coming years, she said. According to a Future of Jobs report in 2023 conducted by the World Economic Forum, by 2027, 83 million jobs are projected to be lost while 69 million are predicted to be created, leading to a 23 per cent labour market churn. The report also represented a reduction in employment of 14 million jobs. 

Because of this, rather than focusing on titles, Bailey said, it can often be more valuable to focus on skills. This involves deciding which skills are important and learning to develop them. Soft, transferable skills that employers are looking for include communication, time management, teamwork, and collaboration as these skills are harder to teach. 

“The good news is that [students] are already developing so many in [their] courses,” Bailey noted. “I think a lot of students who come in aren’t aware of how many skills they’re developing.” 

The CCD employs certain metaphors that can reconceptualize how students view the job market. “In Canada, there’s this metaphor of the corporate ladder — you graduate and work your way up in this very linear process,” Bailey explained. “We encourage students to think about careers like sailing a boat.

“It’s about uncovering your purpose in life — what drives you? What problem do you want to solve in the world? A sailboat doesn’t go from point A to point B, it tacks back and forth with the winds. So you’re constantly changing direction, but you’re generally going towards this sense of purpose and a deeper sense of meaning in your life.”

Another skill that is important to develop in an uncertain job market is networking — a strong network will help a job seeker identify opportunities outside of job searching tools.

“I know students don’t love hearing that because networking is scary, but students are already doing it. Your classmates are your network. Your profs are your network,” Bailey explained. “You’re already passively networking. But it’s important to continue to cultivate those relationships.”