Inside the Greater Toronto Area’s summer youth unemployment crisis

Youth unemployment numbers in the Greater Toronto Area and across the country are the worst they’ve been in years and this summer has done little to help, a new report says.

The report from CIBC, No to being young again; The struggles of Canadian youth employment, shows youth unemployment numbers across Canada have been increasing at a distressing rate since 2022.

Earlier this summer, when youth applications opened for summer positions at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, a record-breaking 54,000 applicants caused the online application system to hit capacity, prompting administrators to pull the plug.

This incident correlates with data in the CIBC report, which says Canadians aged 15-19 experienced a stark decline in viable part-time employment between 2019 and 2025.

To those in the GTA who specialize in helping youth find employment, that spells an uncertain future for the country’s largest pool of young workers, especially as the struggles of the greater economic machine, when amplified, trickle down.

“When the overall unemployment rate goes down, youth unemployment mirrors it, unfortunately, to double the standard or sometimes triple,” Tim Lang, CEO of Youth Employment Services (YES), told INsauga.com.

At the time of publication, the national unemployment rate was hovering at just under seven per cent, while the average for youth employment is only a few decimal points away from 16 per cent.

In his capacity as a leader in facilitating youth employment in the GTA, Lang stated that while there is a drought in almost every sector taking on young labour, industries like retail and hospitality have seen the worst vacancies in years.

“Especially in entry-level jobs in these sectors, for the first time in a long time, we have seen a decline in hospitality retail jobs in the summer, a season where they traditionally grow in availability,” said Lang.

Lang went on to note this uncharacteristically desolate summer season ties to numerous economic factors, including the general cost-of-living crisis and constraints tariffs have put on companies both large and small.

Market conditions aside, YES isn’t the only organization in the GTA trying to give youth a fighting chance at a growing chequing account.

The Neighborhood Group, also known as TNG Community Services, is a Toronto-based community engagement platform with its own branch of youth employment programs.

However, recent shakeups in provincial social assistance programs have left organizations that rely on government funding in a perilous situation, as they are now forced to overhaul their programming.

Representatives from TNG told INsauga.com that upon the launch of the province’s new Integrated Employment Services, which rolled out this past March, they had to axe several branches of their youth employment services.

“We are in a challenging time with our programming as Toronto has moved into the new Integrated Employment Service model that resulted in the wind-down of our two youth programs under Employment Ontario – Youth Job Connection and Youth Job Connection Summer. In addition, our project funded through Service Canada was reduced a year ago from 110 youth a year to serving only 23,” Kim Patel, VP for Employment and Training Services at TNG, told INsauga.com via email.

Patel added TNG, amongst other youth employment services in the GTA, is actively advocating on municipal, provincial and federal levels to increase investment in specialized youth programming, stating “the demand is great, but the supply of programs has decreased substantially.”

Lang adds, “We’re hoping that Prime Minister Carney has some pressure to sustain and increase funding.”

Working in tandem with a limping economy and a lack of hiring incentives is also the job market itself, with the CIBC report indicating that mostly in the 15 to 24 age bracket, the presence of AI could be actively replacing entry-level, low-skill tasks from young workers entering their preferred sector right out of high school or post-secondary institutions.

It’s a lingering prospect that, according to Lang, has shattered the drive of many young workers throughout Ontario and Canada.

“You add that to an already difficult job search, alongside misinformation on social media, and you have people who are desperate trying to navigate this low morale,” says Lang. “Part of the job, with an organization like ours, is to say that there is hope.”

Lang and his team have implemented programs that were formerly dubbed “pandemic-proof,” as youth employment has not taken a nosedive to this degree since the early pandemic years.

Some of these programs include encouraging youth to engage in work within the construction sector, labour or landscaping.

However, due to the lack of available work elsewhere, Lang was not shy to note that this summer alone, youth applications within these sectors have doubled, further cannibalizing an already limited pool of availability.

With these conditions for summer employment in the GTA, which is seasonal, authorities like Lang remain apprehensive about the standard for the remainder of the year and, beyond that, what 2026 will look like.

Numerous sources have coined the term “youthcession,” which they believe has come about as a result of what’s felt to be an exclusive, hostile ecosystem for young Canadians.

According to Lang, if a proper recession were to hit the Canadian economy, prospects for youth employment are likely to become even more severely depleted than ever before.

“Youth unemployment, traditionally, goes up and down with market conditions. So, if a recession were to hit within the next, say, six months, it would take an already not great situation and make it a lot worse,” he said.