B.C. students in search of a summer job are facing the toughest job market in years, according to business experts.
At Vancouver’s Dunbar Theatre, owner Ken Charko said they would usually be hiring students to fill spots for full-time staff taking vacations, among other roles, but full-time staff are not taking much time off.
“Because of how everybody feels about the economy, instead they’re like, ‘As many hours as possible, as many days as possible’,” Charko told Global News.
As a result, for the first time in almost 25 years, he is not taking on extra summer staff.
The B.C. Business Council says that over the past year, B.C.’s youth unemployment rate has climbed from 10.5 per cent to 16.6 per cent, which is the largest increase of any province.
” Young people start facing high unemployment, but they’re also facing a lack of opportunity,” Jairo Yunis, Director of Policy with the Business Council of British Columbia said.
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The organization said that part of the reason is the province’s private sector is shrinking, while the public sector has grown more than 30 per cent in eight years.
“If we want to grow the economy and if we want to keep young people in the province, we need a more deliberate focus on private sector job creation,” Yunis said.
Charko said he is seeing two things happen in the current job market.
“The people wanting the jobs, there’s more of them,” he said.
“The people having them are wanting to stay in the jobs that they have because they’re fearful the other jobs are not available.
“The companies that have the employees are tightening up the job market because they’re fearful of what it’s gonna be in the summer.”
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