LOST
GENERATION
HUFFINGTON
10.20.13
“YOU HAVE THIS MIND-BOGGLING
AMOUNT OF DEBT, NOT REALLY
KNOWING HOW OR WHEN YOU’RE
GOING TO PAY IT OFF. YOU JUST ANTICIPATE
THAT IT’S THIS DEBT YOU’RE GOING
TO HAVE FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.”
Canada. That amounts to the biggest gap between youth and adult
unemployment rates since 1977.
More Canadians are enrolled
in post-secondary education today than ever before, yet a report this summer from CIBC, one
of the country’s biggest banks,
warned that youth unemployment
is worsened by universities that
keep churning out graduates with
no job experience.
“While more education is positive, increasingly, students are
completing their education without any work experience and are
more likely to be caught in the no
job–no experience, and no experience–no job cycle,” said the study’s
author, Benjamin Tal.
Once they have a job, youth in
Canada must also face the fact that
due to seniority and experience
differences they are twice as likely
as older counterparts to be laid off.
After several periods of unemployment over the past five
years — some stretching as long
as seven months — Ostrov now
works on a casual basis as a ward
clerk at a hospital. But she says
she plans to follow many of her
friends nearly 5,000 kilometers
(3,100 miles) west to Alberta in
search of better opportunities.
Her dream is to find a career
that matches her skills, and combines her passion for politics with
written communication. Her parents didn’t go to university, and
she hopes to show them that her
years in school were valuable.
“It’s important to me that I apply my degree in the future,” she
says, noting that her parents “took
a risk with me that they never took
for themselves as young adults.”
That risk adds another layer to
her worries and her aspirations.
“I want to prove that it was
worth it,” she says.