Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu announced Friday afternoon the federal government is creating up to 6,000 more spots in the Canada Summer Jobs program for young people — a move that comes as many struggle to find work.
“This is late breaking news, but I think super important to be able to help with the sort of urgency this summer,” Hajdu said in an interview with CBC’s The House airing Saturday morning.
According to a news release, the federal government is reallocating $25 million from Employment and Social Development Canada to create the extra 6,000 jobs. The release also said CSJ was “on track” to create 70,000 jobs for youth this summer.
The unemployment rate for people between 15 and 24 years old has steadily ticked upward, according to Statistics Canada. In January 2023, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in this age group was 10 per cent. In May 2025, it was 14.2 per cent.
Mel Purchase, a 19-year-old from Alliston, Ont., said she’s been driving around submitting her resumé to temp agencies “and just hope for the best, and hope they can figure something out to help me.”
Purchase said her ideal job would be working in a factory to build toward her dream career in welding, but “every single person is looking for work.”
She told The House she’s trying to stay positive, but “it’s a little bit stressful trying to figure everything out and trying to plan, especially because of just how expensive everything is and once again, the entire hiring crisis.”
“It sucks. Just trying over and over and over again to get a job or just any sort of income is very hard,” Purchase said.
Hajdu said the government is looking to build projects across Canada quickly, which requires more tradespeople. Because of that, it will be “heavily investing” in opportunities for young people to improve their skills if they’re interested in going into the trades.
Canada Summer Jobs provides wage subsidies to support employers in creating summer work experiences for those between the ages of 15 and 30 years old.
Riley Locke, a 25-year-old graduate student at Toronto Metropolitan University, told The House he needed to complete a summer internship between the first and second year of his master’s in urban planning, but the experience was “frustrating.”
Locke, who submitted hundreds of applications since January, spoke with host Catherine Cullen a week before he finally landed a job. In a follow-up interview, he said he’s relieved but “it’s hard not to feel like it’s pretty much just luck of the draw.”
“I had my fair share of really stressful days where I had received a rejection email,” Locke said.
What’s to blame?
Ilona Dougherty, co-creator of the Youth & Innovation Project at the University of Waterloo, said Purchase and Locke’s experiences of sending out countless resumés with no luck is exactly what she’s been hearing for well over a year.
“Unfortunately, young people are the canary in the coal mine,” Dougherty said.
She added there’s currently an “incredibly complex economic situation” on top of other challenging factors like increasing use of AI and a large number of temporary foreign workers.
Locke said the job application process can sometimes feel demeaning and dehumanizing because some companies use AI to sort through applications.
He added it becomes a “guessing game” to figure out “whether I need to be writing for a human or writing for a robot.”
Dougherty said Canada needs to “fundamentally rethink what entry-level jobs are going to look like for young people” if it wants a workforce that is not economically disengaged in five to 10 years.
“AI is a train barrelling down the tracks, but we’re certainly not going to stop it. We need to make sure young people are prepared,” Doughty said. She also referenced a New York Times guest essay from a LinkedIn executive who wrote that AI is breaking the “bottom rung of the career ladder.”
In late May, Conservative MP Jamil Jivani launched a petition to end the temporary foreign worker program and cited youth unemployment as one reason why.
Dougherty said the situation is “a lot more complex than [Jivani] presents it to be,” but she added there is evidence that wages depress when companies rely on temporary foreign workers rather than paying a young Canadian.
“It’s not just about stopping immigration of all kinds and this will magically fix the problem. But certainly we have to make sure that companies are paying proper wages for those entry-level roles. That’s absolutely critical,” she said.
“We need to really take this seriously and invest in young people.… It’s up to the adults. This is not the young peoples’ fault, and we need to fix the problem.”
