While the economic downturn has sent unemployment rates skyrocketing, it appears the recession has had a particularly devastating impact on the jobless rate among Canada's youth, a new report has found.
According to Canada's Vital Signs 2009, a quality-of-life report card from the Community Foundations of Canada, youth unemployment rose from 10.7 per cent in January of 2008 to 16.3 per cent by this summer.
And as of August 2009, youth employment rates were falling faster than among any other age group.
Particularly alarming, the report said, was the severe downturn in the summer job market for youths.
The unemployment rate among students who were hoping to land a summer job was 19.2 per cent. Those who did find jobs worked an average of 23.4 hours per week, the lowest average in more than three decades.
Community Foundations of Canada president Monica Patten said that while Canadians had been told all summer about difficulties youths were having entering the job market, the figures were higher than expected.
"We need to be very concerned about (16.3 per cent unemployment), obviously first and foremost for the young people themselves," Patten told Canada AM Tuesday in an interview from Ottawa. "But this stat and a number of others...they talk to us about what we need to anticipate and be ready for in our communities."
The report, which was released Tuesday alongside 16 local Vital Signs reports from communities across the country, also contains sobering statistics about high school completion rates among Aboriginal students.
According to the data, the high school completion rate among Aboriginal students was 56.3 per cent in 2006, while the completion rate among the non-Aboriginal population was 76.9 per cent.
Among Aboriginal students living on reserves, the high school completion rate was even lower, 40.5 per cent. The rate was 39.3 per cent for Aboriginal students in Nunavut.
Other findings include data that show the gap widening between the rich and poor in Canada.
In 1980, the report says, a family in the 90th percentile of income distribution in Canada earned 15 times more than a family in the 10th percentile.
By 2000, a family in the 90th percentile earned 32 times as much as a family in the 10th percentile.
Patten said she hopes the data raises awareness among Canadians of issues plaguing their communities, and leads to action from average families to charitable groups to policy makers.
"These are very complex issues that we have raised and that are being raised locally," Patten said. "And so it will take all of those kinds of interventions and many, many more before we can begin to resolve some of these very pressing matters."
