B.C. records worst youth employment in Canada: report
B.C. recorded the worst youth employment performance of any province, with a 14 per cent decline since 2019, while most other provinces posted gains.
British Columbia’s youth labour market has collapsed over the past seven years, leaving tens of thousands of young people without work experience and pushing the participation rate to its lowest level in a quarter century, according to a new Business Council of British Columbia report.
While the province’s youth population (ages 15-24) grew by roughly 58,000 since 2019, employment in the group fell by 51,000.
Youth employment has now slipped back to 2017 levels. At the same time, the number of young people neither working nor looking for work surged by 85,000, more than the entire population increase.
