Young people in B.C. need help getting jobs: advocates

Hundreds of thousands of B.C. jobs will require post-secondary training in the next ten years, according to youth employment advocates.

Youth unemployment in B.C. went up in January, according to Rosie Forth at Drive Youth Employment Services. She says an enormous increase in living costs is part of what’s keeping young workers from taking on certain jobs.

“I think it’s sort of a holding back on perhaps taking jobs that would help in the short term because a lot of people know that they might not be able to commit to that particular position in that wage and it simply doesn’t cover their living costs,” she said. “It’s a really interesting time in youth unemployment, partly because we’re just emerging from the pandemic.”

B.C.’s 10-year labour outlook says around 790,000 job openings will require some kind of post-secondary training. And people with bachelors or masters degrees will fill most of those positions.

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Vancouver Economic Commission CEO Eleena Marley says young people need help getting higher demand jobs.

“When it comes to youth employment, it’s not just about preparing youth for workplaces. It’s about preparing workplaces for youth,” she explained. “The youth demographic here in Vancouver has recovered worse from the pandemic and in comparison to other major cities in Canada.”

Forth believes much of the same.

“I think there is a gap in youths’ ability to take certain training to prepare them for those jobs. And I think a lot of that gap is also about affordability,” she said. “They’ve always faced this in Vancouver, costs have always been high, but now it’s really at a peak.”

B.C. Minister of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills Selina Robinson says a number of programs are in the works to help young people get the training they need for these jobs.

“We have the BC Access Grant, the first grant that we have for post-secondary students in like 15, 20 years. So that’s available up to $4,000 available to students,” she explained. “We’re creating bite sized programs, bite sized micro credentials for students. It’s really about making money while you’re going to school.”