Finding employment is a frequent topic of conversation amongst UW students. Walking across campus and inside classrooms, there is always chatter about searching for a co-op, part-time job, and even full-time employment. Yet with the current job market, there seems to be plenty of disheartening stories and dejected sentiments to go around. This July, Canada hit a record high youth unemployment rate of 14.6 per cent since September 2010, excluding 2020 and 2021. Youth are those aged 15-24, meaning UW students are included in the peaking statistic. 

Andrew Yang is a UW arts and business student who graduated in winter 2025 with a major in communication arts and design practice. Since then, he has consistently been applying for jobs — mostly on LinkedIn — committing fully to the job search starting July. “Even during my grad trip I was starting to look for employment, just kind of seeing what the market is like. Everyone [was] saying that the market is pretty bad so I wanted to get ahead of it,” Yang said. Marking 30-40 job applications a week, Yang has now hit around 360 applications and is still continuing his search. He has received a few callbacks and interviews, and hopes that his upcoming interview will go successfully. 

Yang’s experience is no special case. In a CBC news article, senior business writer Jenna Benchetrit describes it as “a perfect storm of economic conditions: an inflation crisis that came on the heels of a pandemic; a surge in population growth that has outpaced the number of available jobs; and now, a country teetering closer to recession as the U.S. trade war wreaks uncertainty on the economy.” For those graduating during this time, the job search may not only be discouraging, but leave scars to long-term earning prospects. Economics professor Miles Corak of the City University of New York explained that those graduates often fall into jobs that aren’t as high-paying and in occupations they hadn’t anticipated doing. 

Ilona Dougherty is a co-creator and managing director of the Youth & Innovation Project at UW. In CBC’s radio show Fresh Air, she expressed how entry-level jobs are at high risk. “Any time that we have a period of economic challenge, young people are essentially the canaries in the coal mine. They’re the first ones to be either let go because they have the least amount of seniority and the least amount of experience,” she said. In addition, the increasing use of AI in the workforce becomes another factor. “We’re not quite sure yet how AI is going to impact jobs, but we know the jobs that tend to be entry level are likely at high risk.” 

It doesn’t help that many companies require three to five years of experience for entry-level roles. “I’m seeing young people with a master’s degree or even a PhD with no experience. They have zero experience in the workplace. And we’re seeing companies expect that young people will be fully formed when they’re entering the workplace — that there isn’t going to be any on-the-job training or professional development,” Dougherty said. 

Fortunately, many UW students have gained some work experience through the co-op program. Over the summer, mechanical engineer graduate Chris Soh applied for around 50 jobs before interviewing for the position that he received an offer for. His first day will be at the end of September, working in California as a mechanical design engineer at Tesla. He said that the co-op program was an immense help, “I think [interviewing is] a skill, so you just have to do [interviews] over and over again, and doing co-ops will put you in that [practice]. And also, I think that the work experience and real-life experience you get during co-ops translates very well to interview questions they might ask. So, you can give a much more practical, real-world answer versus a theoretical, by-the-book answer.” Yang also expressed the usefulness of the co-op program, “I think that I’d be having an even worse time if I had no experience at all, so that’s why I’m thankful that I’m going into the field that I did co-ops in.”

However, opportunities are hard to come by. Even with his experience in the field through co-op, Yang expressed that it’s been hard to find entry level roles. Much of the advice he received has been based on networking, but so far, his efforts haven’t been met with much success. “In a more ideal world I would just be returning to an organization I did co-op in. But at this time, there hasn’t been anything that’s popped up. I’ve messaged [previous] managers and… it’s either no budget or ‘We’ll send in your resumé but we’ll see.’ It’s not a guaranteed kind of thing,” he said. “I definitely haven’t been able to utilize my network a ton.”

That’s not to say that there aren’t recruiters looking for candidates. Soh landed his job offer through a recruiter that reached out to him. “The job that I got wasn’t actually from my [50] applications. A recruiter messaged me on LinkedIn and said I should apply for this role because I could be what they’re looking for.” 

In August, Statistics Canada reported that 26,000 jobs were lost in Ontario. A few days after the report was released, Premier Doug Ford said in a breakfast speech to the Toronto Region Board of Trade, “I assure you, if you look hard enough, it… may be in fast food or something else, but you’ll find a job.” Dougherty expressed her disappointment in his comment, “It was kind of a big sigh. Here we go again, with a politician making unhelpful comments that actually aren’t based in reality. It just doesn’t help anyone, and it’s not factual. So it’s really disappointing to hear Premier Ford speak that way.” 

Students want to work in a role that they went to school for. “We’re not looking for just a job… we’re looking for our careers. I feel like getting a job that I could’ve gotten without my university degree [is] kind of disheartening and [Ford’s comment] seems out of touch. We go to school to get an education that will lead to a sustainable career and those opportunities aren’t there,” Yang said. 

Dougherty also explained that there are significant economic scarring effects, saying that, “A lot of young people can’t afford to do a job in fast food because they’ve spent so much time occurring debt in schools. So the reality is that there’s long-term economic scarring — you’re less likely to make good wages through your career. But then there’s the mental health impacts, right? It’s so frustrating and disappointing. And it really adds up the longer a young person is unemployed.” 

Soh mentioned that he has gradually seen his peers post about starting a job. However, there seems to be other paths that graduates are taking, as well. “It’s coming slowly… There are also a lot of people around me who are kind of giving up [on the job search] and going the master’s route. Or they’re doing another internship after their graduation, that does happen too,” he said. 

From economic conditions, changing technologies, to a lack of entry-level jobs, youth unemployment has taken a hit. “I think we’re at crisis levels when it comes to youth unemployment,” Dougherty said. “It has many different impacts on all parts of society. This is not just a young-person problem, it’s really an all of us problem.”