Question Period Note: Employment and Skills Support for Canada's Youth (ESDC)

How is the Government of Canada supporting youth to gain the skills and experience they need to successfully enter the labour market?

•Many youth are struggling with affordability. About 30% of 15 to 24 years old reported difficulty making ends meet.
•Good jobs open a world of possibilities for a better future. The Government is taking action.
•In 2024-2025, the Government will create over 130,000 opportunities through the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy Program, Canada Summer Jobs and the Student Work Placement Program.
•Budget 2024 committed $558.8 million in additional funding for these programs in 2025-2026.
•Through this announcement, the Government will continue to support 130,000 youth and students to gain skills and launch their careers next year.

•The Government has a mandate commitment to continue scaling up youth and student skills and employment programming and initiatives for Canadian youth. The main levers to deliver on this commitment are the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy (YESS), which includes the YESS Program and Canada Summer Jobs (CSJ), and the Student Work Placement Program (SWPP).
•During the pandemic, the Government made historic investments to Canada’s Youth Employment and Skills Strategy to help youth, especially those facing barriers, to find and maintain good jobs.
•Although youth employment did improve following the pandemic, recent labour market trends show an increase in unemployment rates for youth and a decline in employment:
o In October 2024, the unemployment rate for youth (15 to 24) was 12.8%, an increase of 1.4 percentage points from October 2023. In comparison, the unemployment rate for those over the age of 25 was 5.4% in October 2024.
•Youth generally have higher unemployment than older age groups due to their higher frequency of entrances and exits to the labour market. However, as youth face more challenging labour market conditions, these transitions could be taking longer than in previous years.
•Between June 2023 and June 2024, the population growth of youth aged 15-24 outpaced employment growth, contributing to a decline in the rate of youth employment.
•Labour demand in key service industries that commonly employ youth, such as retail trade and food services, has also been on a downward trend; leaving fewer opportunities for the growing number of youth searching for work in Canada.
•The number of young people in Canada aged 15 to 29 who are not in employment, education or training (NEET) saw a significant increase from 703,000 in 2023 to 815,000 in 2024.
•Many youth continue to need support, including those from under-represented groups (e.g., youth with disabilities, Indigenous youth, Black and other racialized youth). For example:
o In October 2024, the unemployment rate for Black youth aged 15-24 was 21.9%.
o In October 2024, the unemployment rate for racialized youth aged 15-24 was 17%.
o In October 2024, the unemployment rate for Indigenous youth aged 15-24 was 17.9%.
•Youth are also facing socio-economic challenges. Reporting by Statistics Canada indicates that about 30% of 15 to 24 years old reported difficulty making ends meet and that youth are spending more of their income on housing than older age groups. It also indicates that Canadian youth are less satisfied and less hopeful about the future.

Youth Employment and Skills Strategy
•The YESS is a horizontal Government of Canada initiative led by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and delivered in partnership with 11 other federal departments, agencies, and Crown corporations. The Strategy aims to provide youth (aged 15 to 30), especially those facing barriers to employment, with opportunities to receive employment supports, gain work experience, and develop the skills needed to find and keep quality jobs. Through the YESS, the Government of Canada supports the employment goals of young people and addresses gaps across key sectors of the economy.
•The ESDC YESS Program provides funding to organizations to deliver individually tailored supports and services with the goal of equipping youth with the tools needed to succeed on their employment journeys. It includes a focus on those further from opportunity (e.g., those not in education, employment, or training, underrepresented and disadvantaged youth).
•CSJ is a national program delivered by ESDC. CSJ supports employers from not-for-profit organizations and the public sector, as well as private sector organizations with 50 or fewer full-time employees, to provide quality summer employment opportunities for youth (age 15 to 30). CSJ provides youth with opportunities to develop and improve their skills. For some, CSJ is a first job experience that informs future education, training, and career choices. The program is responsive to national and local priorities, as well as labour market needs.
•To advance the mandate commitment to create a stream for youth with disabilities under the YESS, stakeholder engagement was held in fall 2022. The Minister for Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) and Youth and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of WAGE met with youth with disabilities, youth service providers and employers.
•Their advice was put into action in the recent ESDC YESS Program Call for Proposals (CFP), launched in Fall 2023, which included a dedicated stream for projects serving youth with disabilities. Approximately 30% of the projects funded through the Fall 2023 ESDC YESS Program CFP were funded through the Youth with Disabilities Stream, exceeding the initial target of 20%.
•The Government’s investment is delivering results for youth. For example, a mid-cycle assessment found that April 2020 to December 2022, 81% of ESDC YESS Program participants had returned to school or were in employment after participation.
•In 2022-2023, the YESS Program supported over 26,000 opportunities and CSJ supported over 115,000 jobs.
•In 2023-2024 and 2024-2025, the YESS Program will create 40,000 opportunities and CSJ will support 140,000 summer job placements.
•Budget 2024 proposed $351.2 million in additional funding for the YESS to help create over 90,000 youth job placements and support opportunities in 2025-2026. These investments include:
o $150.7 million in 2025-2026 for the YESS Program to provide job placements and employment supports to youth; and
o $200.5 million in 2025-2026, to CSJ to provide well-paying summer job opportunities, including in sectors facing critical labour shortages, such as housing construction.
•This funding aligns with levels announced in the 2022 Fall Economic Statement and will allow the YESS Program and the CSJ program to maintain targets that are consistent with previous years. It is anticipated that the YESS Program will support 20,000 opportunities annually in 2025-2026 and that CSJ 2025 will support 70,000 youth.

ESDC YESS Program Call for Proposal

•The 2023 ESDC YESS Program CFP provided more than 200 organizations with approximately $370 million over four years to help improve labour market outcomes for up to 22,000 youth facing barriers to employment. CFP 2023 included a new stream designed to address the unique barriers to employment encountered by youth with disabilities, with a target of supporting up to 20% of projects under this stream.
• Some projects have now officially started, while the remainder of projects will continue to start throughout fall, and into winter.

Student Work Placement Program
Investment

•Budget 2024 proposes $207.6 million in 2025-2026 for the SWPP to create more work-integrated learning (WIL) opportunities for post-secondary students.
•Budget 2023 invested $197.7 million in 2024-2025 to the SWPP to continue creating quality WIL opportunities for students through partnerships between employers and post-secondary education institutions.
•The Program will support the creation of approximately 40,000 WIL opportunities per year until 2025-2026 for post-secondary students across various in-demand sectors.
•These measures will help students gain the necessary skills, education, and real-life work experience to transition successfully into the workforce.

Results

•Launched in 2017-2018 as a small-scale pilot, the SWPP has grown from offering 10,000 WIL opportunities over four years, to over 50,000 in 2023-2024.
•Between 2017-2018 and 2023-2024, the Program has supported over 249,000 WIL opportunities for post-secondary students across all provinces and territories as well as in all sectors of the Canadian economy. This total includes 161,081 work placements and 88,845 innovative WIL opportunities.

Background
•SWPP supports partnerships between industry and post-secondary institutions to create quality WIL opportunities for students in all disciplines.
•SWPP helps post-secondary students to develop work-ready skills, employers to recruit and develop talent, and post-secondary institutions to adapt to changing labour market needs.
•For thousands of Canadian college, university, polytechnic, and CEGEP students, WIL programs help to bring together academic learning and applied work experience. These opportunities can include but are not limited to co-ops, internships, or mentorship programs, as well as other non-traditional experiences like hackathons, boot camps, and micro-internships.
•The Program incentivizes employers through an enhanced wage subsidy to offer placements to students who have historically lacked access or experience barriers to participating in WIL opportunities. Under SWPP, under-represented groups refer to women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities, newcomers, and visible minorities.
•Under-represented groups may face intersecting barriers when in the workforce and the post-secondary education system. A study of WIL applications in Ontario found a lack of applicants from diverse groups. Only a third of WIL applicants identified as racialized (32.2%), a quarter (25.1%) identified as women, 9.3% of applicants identified as newcomers to Canada, 4.3% identified having a disability, and a very small minority, 0.2% of WIL applicants, identified as Indigenous (Toronto Metropolitan University, 2021).

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