The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Why Is It So Hard for Young People to Find Jobs Right Now?

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

What's behind the growing challenges facing young job seekers, and could global oil disruptions add further pressure to the economy? As youth unemployment remains stubbornly high, questions are building about what is driving the slowdown in hiring and what it means for those entering the workforce. We examine the factors shaping the job market for young people, from business conditions to structural barriers, and what might change in the months ahead. Dan Kelly, CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and Ilona Dougherty, managing director of the Youth and Innovation Project at the University of Waterloo, break down the trends and possible paths forward. We then turn to global energy markets. After major disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz linked to the Iran war, what risks do shifting oil flows pose for prices and economic stability? Rory Johnston, oil market researcher and founder of the Commodity Context newsletter, explains what has changed, what remains uncertain, and how these developments could ripple beyond the energy sector.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Derek Martinez, Eliza Lela. The wrong names were called, or no names at all. So what happened? Well, Glendale President Tiffany Hernandez explained. We're using a new AI system as our reader. So that is a lesson learned for us. So AI messed up their graduation, just like AI could complicate their lives after graduation, at least according to some of the headlines.

And it's true that the youth unemployment rate is high in Ontario, more than 15% in the first quarter of 26. But is AI really to blame? Turns out the answer may be far more complicated, but no less of a problem. We look at why it's so hard for young people to get jobs right now, and what that means for them and for the economy. Then another big economic issue, oil prices. We check in on where things stand now and what could happen next. This is the rundown.

If you're between 15 and 24 and your last, looking for a job, or you know someone who's in that position, you probably already know things look pretty grim out there. So what's going on with the job market for young people? Ilona Doherty is the managing director of the Youth and Innovation Project at the University of Waterloo. And Dan Kelly is the CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. And they join us in studio. Thank you so much for joining us. How are you guys doing? Great to be here. Good to be with you. All right. I want to start our conversation.

by looking at the unemployment rate in Ontario for the first three months of the year. This is a chart. You can see that people in the youth category ages 15 to 24, that is that red bar right there, stands out, has the highest rate of unemployment. What's causing this cohort's unemployment to look the way it does? It's very complicated. There's a lot of different factors, but the reality is young people are the canary and the coal mine. When the economy is tough, young people are the last to get hired, the first to be let go.

So that's certainly the underlying reality. But again, we're in a very complex moment with technology, with immigration. So there's a lot of different dynamics going on. Dan? Yeah. And look, that's absolutely right. On top of that, if you looked at that bar in any year, it looks exactly the same over history. That youth unemployment has always been much higher than that.

in other cohorts. In fact, it is much better than it was a decade or two ago where it has ticked up since the pandemic, but it is not at historic highs. It is kind of in normal range from where it was. All right. I want to make a distinction because 15 to 24 is a pretty big gap. There's some, you know, in terms of life, what's happening for people in that category, there's a lot going on between what a teenager is doing, looking for a summer job versus a new

college or university graduate. what are the challenges that a teenager faces versus a university or college graduate? So teenagers, it's usually the kinds of jobs where it's their first job, they're looking to get experience, and they don't have any experience. And the challenges that young people in that category are facing right now is there's a lot of competition for those kind of service jobs, retail jobs. As you get a little bit older, the challenge shifts. You have more training.

and more experience, or more training but not experience. So then as we get to those college grads, it's the three to five years experience that's on every job posting that they can't get or they don't know how to get. So there's an expectation of those young people that they'll come into the job market with a bow tied perfectly ready, with all the experience they need to go into a job, and that's just not the reality.

Dan, does that sound accurate here? Yeah, no, there's absolutely lots of truth to that observation. I have a 17-year-old son at home and have seen some of this of that earlier cohort in there. And for a lot of those folks, they're looking for their first foot in the door of the labor market. And it is more challenging than it was a couple of years ago. Coming out of the pandemic, the labor market was broken. There were jobs of plenty. Youth unemployment rates were at historic lows at that moment.

Now it is much more significantly challenging for those folks to get their foot in the door. For that older cohort of university grads, yes, the challenges that right now the economy is not working particularly well right now. We've got trade issues, energy issues, and for small businesses, my members, this has been a big struggle to, many of them have not had a normal month of sales in six years. Now, I know you represent these independent businesses, but I'm going to be a little bit. I'm curious about your 17-year-old son. Sure. What were the challenges? Does he have a job right now?

He does have a part-time job right now. But I will say that I gave him, based on his experience and the work that I do, I gave him and his peer group some advice. And some of that is get off your phone and actually look for jobs that are not necessarily posted on online job boards. For young people these days, I think, many of them, if it doesn't, exist online, it doesn't exist. And there are thousands and thousands of jobs that are sitting vacant in small and medium-sized companies because employers are struggling to connect with some of the younger workers. My advice for him was, as he identified, a grocery store around the quarter from our house, was to actually go in and ask to speak to somebody and shake the guy's hand and tell

him that he was looking for work. And when he did that, he found a job the same day. He had applied at that same store online. He had applied with a paper application and no dice there. Ilona, there tends to be perhaps a stereotype with this young cohort that perhaps they're lazy. Perhaps, you know, it is a little easier when you do have a job to look back and be like, well, things are a little different. What was your first job, you know, coming out of school? What did you do? So I worked, so out of high school, I worked at the Association of Yukon communities. I grew up in Whitehorse, Yukon. And so it was an administrative role. I mean, the thing in the Yukon is there's a lot of government programs that support young people. So I had a pretty unique experience. But I also had

jobs that involved chainsaws, again, because I grew up in the Yukon. So trade adjacent jobs as well. So, yeah, I was very fortunate to have a lot of support from the Yukon government to get the foot in the door. And I think getting the foot in the door is really key. All right. This week, headlines from Tim Hortons. They announced that they will no longer rely on the temporary foreign workers program, that they were criticized for using a lot, saying that they will hire 10,000 local team members. Are young people going to be interested in those jobs or those types of jobs?

I think young people are interested in those jobs. And certainly I'm hearing young people apply to many, many dozens of those kinds of jobs and not get a response. So I think young people will be interested. And those kinds of jobs can be really crucial in terms of gaining experience in a workplace, but also learning how to juggle multiple, you know, priorities, working quickly. They're really incredible jobs to, again, get your foot in the door. Dan?

Yeah, and look, I wish Tim Horton's well. The challenge, though, for many businesses is going to be whether they're going to find 10,000 available workers in all of their restaurants across Canada. And that's where I think the struggle is going to be. Yes, I think that they're in some urban areas. There are more youth than available jobs. But we've got to remember, this is a big country. My kid that's looking for work in Toronto is not going to Estaband, Saskatchewan, to look for the job in that community.

They're not going to the Yukon for some of the positions in small communities that have virtually no young people in them. And this is the struggle as we're trying to make, and this is why employers have relied on the temperate. pre-foreign workers in some of these markets. The other challenge, though, that we're facing is that there are a lot of youth that are not particularly interested in some of the work. And this is some of the data that we've collected through a poll of young people. So 50% of young people will not consider a job that has heavy physical labor. 40% of young people will not consider a job that has outdoor work.

One third of young people will say that they will not consider a job that pays the minimum wage. The minimum wage these days, remember, is between $15 and $18 an hour, depending on where you are in the country. It's not the three bucks that I was making. So these wage levels have really risen much faster than inflation over the last little while. And young people are making choices in some instances. We have, I don't disagree that it is more challenging than before. There's not a job for absolutely everybody. But there are positions out there that are just going vacant because young people are not particularly.

particularly interested in doing them. I'll get you to respond. I should just mention. So Ontario's minimum wage at the moment, $17.60. It will go up in October to $17.95. I will just preface, even when I was working minimum wage, I always thought I want more money as well. And so I think that's a conversation that a lot of people have. But, Ilona.

But, again, it's different if you're a 15-year-old who's living with your parents versus somebody who just got out of the university, had student debt, and is looking to have a living wage, which is, I think, $26, $27. you know, in Ontario, right? So there's a difference here. It's not young people aren't being unreasonable, just being unreasonable.

That's not the dynamic. Like I think we need to recognize that there's dynamics on both sides. I do a lot of work with, whether it's small business or larger businesses, and there's also a reality that businesses aren't willing to invest in young employees and train them, right?

There's a lot of skills, creativity. active listening, all these human skills that are becoming more and more important in the age of AI. Those aren't things you can learn in the classroom. You have to learn that through experience. And so there is also the responsibility on small businesses, on businesses of ever, any kind to say, okay, you might not have that three to five years experience, but I see potential in you. I'm going to bring you into my company and work with you to gain those practical skills. That's really critical. one of the challenges in that is if we put too high a price on the heads of the young people as they

get their first foot in the door, it becomes challenging for small businesses to be able to afford to do that. And that's the struggle that we're hearing from so many of my members right now, that yeah, if the minimum wage were, you know, eight bucks an hour, I'm willing to put the time and patience into coaching somebody that doesn't come with all of the skills necessary for that job. But if I'm paying $17 an hour for that person, I kind of need them to be able to to start running here and serve my customers. The other challenge, I don't want to, just to make sure that I don't misrepresent my member data, 60% of them do say that they are struggling with the young people that they have

to have attentiveness to the job, to not be sitting on their phone while they're, in fact, supposed to be serving a customer. The reputation of some young people right now is not amazing with some small employers across the country. I am curious with the members that you represent. are they more likely to hire someone who's 24 versus someone who is 15 and needs the training? It really depends on the sector of the economy. But look, most young people get their first job in a small and medium-sized company. When I was in Winnipeg growing up, I worked washing dishes in a pizza shop, right?

So those are the kinds of jobs that young people most often take when they're first coming, when they're in high school and looking to have a little bit of extra money. And that's the group that I worry about. I don't disagree for post-secondary education educated students. It is a different set of challenges than perhaps those that are in the high school system. All right. Ilona, what's at stake for young people for the long-term health of the economy if they're unable to find that first job? There is an enormous amount of at stake.

And I just want to be very clear. A lot of the stereotypes about young people are not fair. And they're stereotypes. You've not seen a kid looking at their phone when they're supposed to be. Well, you have an employment study in a project. I have a longitudinal study that I lead around youth employment and understanding the long-term outcomes for young people. And just to say, adults and businesses need to take responsibility for what they're not doing well to meaningfully engage those young people. And also parents need to take responsibility for recognizing the parenting trends that maybe have led to young people,

not being prepared for the workplace. Same with education. Well, one of the things is we don't support young people to take risks, to be independent. We have a tendency, the helicopter parenting, right, is certainly a thing where we kind of do too much for our young people and then don't allow them to be themselves to develop skills through experience. We kind of overprotect them. So here's just to support your 100% kind of. correct, to support you.

The stories, when we did a study of this years ago, one of the trends was mom or dad coming and talking for junior in the interview to get the job. If there's a problem in the workplace and there's some discipline action, the parent comes to talk to the manager about how they were unfair to their kid. And look, we got to stop doing that. We got to let your young people. I know the 10th patient to do it, but it sets them back when we don't allow them to do these. young people are incredible in this generation especially. We need to value them, value their

lived experience and their unique abilities and trust them. If we don't do that, if small business don't trust young people, if parents don't trust young people, the long-term outcomes are really problematic. Dan, help me understand a little bit what federal or Ontario policies are successful at supporting young people. For example, we have some federal programs, a summer jobs program. In Ontario. We have the Skills Development Fund for Trades as well. Tell me a little bit about those programs and how they can help. You know, there are several good programs out there that do support employers in providing opportunities or taking a chance on a young person that they might not otherwise have been able to do from the resources of the business itself. The Canada Summer Jobs

Program does decent work in that. There are major struggles with them, though. A lot of them have a massive bureaucracy, tons of paperwork that the employer has to go through. For the Canada Summer Jobs Program, for example, you have to apply in November and December for a job that you're going to have in June. And as a small business right now, you don't have a clue whether you're going to be able to hire one or two or three people the following summer. Co-op education, I will say, is a good thing. And there's many programs, including some increasingly at the high school level, that are allowing for co-op education. Those are very popular. I will say small businesses, this is my criticism of the business community,

they don't necessarily have as much awareness of some of these programs as could be the case, and I think that's an opportunity too. You mentioned co-op. The first thing I think of is University of Waterloo. In high school, it is a renowned program that everyone talked about. Why don't other universities or colleges adopt a similar program? I think a lot are, but it's really hard work. You know, it's about relationships with employers,

but it's also about creating an infrastructure to support young employees in figuring out what it's like to be in the workplace for the first time. So I would just say the research is really clear that wage subsidies work when we're talking about young people's long-term economic outcomes. We also know that when you have a training program that's tied to a wage subsidy, that works. The research is really clear about that. What doesn't work is skills and training programs that are not attached to a wage subsidy.

So we have this tendency to over-emphasize education and skills. We need, especially in an era of AI, to focus on experience in those human skills. And you only get those by being in a workplace and doing things. That resonates 100% with what we're hearing from business owners. The skills that they're looking for are those soft skills that come from from actually doing a job. The stuff that we're teaching in schools, while incredibly valuable and important on its own,

are perhaps less connected than they were in the years in the past to actual jobs. And so if we can get some of that, Ontario does encourage students to take some volunteer hours. I think that's great. But maybe we need to go a little bit further than that and have a blend of in those volunteer hours. Maybe you could also qualify if you worked in a small business

at that stage and get some skills that way. Dan, Ilona, we're going to have to leave it there. I really appreciate this conversation. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Anytime. About a quarter of the world's maritime oil trade used to pass through the strait of Hormuz.

That all changed in February with the start of the Iran war. Now, we're dealing with price hikes in an uncertain future. Rory Johnson is an oil market researcher and founder of the Commodity Context newsletter, and he joins us in the studio. How are you doing, Rory?

Thanks for having me. All right. Before last weekend, there were allegedly peace talks between Iran and the U.S. This week, there were more attacks. How difficult is it to really know what's happening in the straight of foremost? So in terms of the negotiation status,

it's extremely hard to keep track of. There are a bunch of different variables and factors in these negotiations between Washington and Tehran. And it's kind of like a bouncing ball as to which one is front and center at the moment between a completely. secession of hostilities, including Lebanon and Israel, which has been a big sticking point,

the status of nuclear talks and kind of where the position, whether or not they come first or later, and then of course the status of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's ongoing control of it. I jokingly said this to you, but, you know, oil is what you do, but it does feel like you are a bit of a reporter on foreign affairs. Yeah, I would say, thankfully my background is actually more on international relations and I teach at the University of Trauma's Monk School. So thankfully, I feel like I'm well, well suited for this, but it has been much more geopolitics recently and much less of the normal marker watching because a lot of the data that we use in the market is actually

lagged. And two months is like an eternity in this war, as we're clearly seeing. All right. Help us understand how many ships are still trapped in the straight right now? Yeah, so depending on the count, you're looking at a couple hundred still trapped in the straight, probably upwards of a thousand if you include all ships. And in terms of the actual ships that are getting out, we're transiting the strait right now, despite the fact that the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, has been claiming on certain days upwards of 30 to 40 ships passing, the ships that were watching, the big ships of consequence, tankers, cargo ships, etc. We're still looking between nine, sorry, between two and nine ships a day, transiting the

strait versus pre-war levels of like 150. Okay. Fair to say, there doesn't seem to be an end in sight at the moment. and we know that nations with strategic petroleum reserves are drawing on them quite rapidly. But I do have to ask, why aren't we seeing oil prices higher than what we are seeing right now? That's the question that's dominated my last couple of months, because I was certainly front and center talking about the potential that this could drive oil prices upwards of $200 a barrel. And here we are today sitting below $100 a barrel. So what's going on?

I think there's a couple things. Firstly, and very importantly, relative to say 2022, the last time we had a big oil crisis when Russia invaded Ukraine, we started that year in 2022 with really, really low oil stocks and a really tight market. And that basically Russia kind of pushed us into the danger zone. This, at the beginning of 2006, we had a very, very oversupplied oil market. And we had had an oversupplied oil market for upwards of a full year prior to the start of the war. That allowed us to build up a lot of these inventories or stockpiles in the global system that have effectively acted as a lot of. buffer. And that, I think, has saved us from the worst of the consequences immediately, but those buffers are still finite by definition, and we're drawing them down now at a record

pace. So fair to say that if this continues to drag on, we could be in that conversation of $200 a barrel. Yes, I would say if the straight was to remain closed in perpetuity, let's say, just for scenario assessment here, that is the level, $200 or so a barrel that would be required to destroy the level of demand required to balance the market without the Strait of Hormuz. I think at this stage, I think the hope is that we do not hit that point

because we get some kind of negotiated settlement before that, but that is the upside of the ceiling, and that's the risk that we're facing and why President Trump in particular is keen to make a deal as quickly as possible. All right. Since we're talking about demand, I want to get a better definition of demand destruction. I am someone who loves my car,

but over the last couple of months, I've actually tinkered with transit, and I might be falling in love with it and being like, you know what? Maybe I leave the car back at home and this is what I do. Help me understand how sort of the demand and supply chain kind of works when something like this happens with the straight-of-ferrous. Yeah, so demand destruction is a word that we're seeing bandied around a lot right now. And I think, you know, as you know, it's not very tightly defined.

So I think it's important here to talk about three different types of demand destruction. What you're talking about, prices are high, so you're considering transit or maybe taking a bike. I actually biked to the studio today. These are examples of price elastic demand destruction. So the price is too high, so I choose to substitute. There's also income elastic demand destruction, which is the price of oil is really high. It strains the global economy. The job I work at goes bankrupt, and I don't have a job to drive to, so I don't drive.

That's income elastic demand destruction. The final piece here that's pretty important is government mandated demand destruction. This think back to COVID, think back to those lockdowns. We've seen similar policies enacted across Asia, where the epicenter of this supply loss is occurred to try and basically ration the available supply. But I think those are the three pieces. Right now, we're not really seeing much of the first two, which is what we'll need to see if prices, you know, if this deficit continues into the market.

And right now we're still relying heavily on both kind of mandated demand or mobility declines and or the injection of huge volumes of strategic petroleum reserves into the market, which are all, again, finite. All right. Let's change gears a little bit. I want to talk a little bit about Canada. There are a number of oil and natural gas pipeline projects under consideration. What projects should Canada prioritize and what incentives can the government offer to get them built?

Yeah, so I mostly focus on oil. So that's where my comments will focus. So not as much on the gas and LNG side, but on the oil side, there's really four options right now that people are discussing. You've got an expansion of the Transmountain system of 360,000 barrels a day. Expansion to the mainline system, about 400,000. There's the Bridger expansion pipeline, or what they're now calling, the Prairie Connect or Prairie Link Pipeline, which is supposed to connect in with the old Keystone Excel assets,

the banded ones that if you could remember those from a while, from a few years back. And then finally there's this, I think, the main political pipeline in the country right now, which is this Northwest Coast oil pipeline that's being pushed by the Daniel Smith government in Alberta. Each of those have very different kind of cost benefits to them. Importantly, the ones that head to the states

are likely going to be the cheapest. And expansions are going to be cheaper than new pipelines. because generally you don't have to cross the Rockies, you know, the environmental permitting is easier. You don't have First Nations concerns in the same way, although you still have some across the Midwest of the United States. But in general, it's always been cheaper to build southbound into the states,

which is why 90 plus percent of our oil has always gone there. But the challenge of that pipeline, and I think that's what the private sector would do if left to its own devices, because they have to prioritize the most profitable barrel and the most profitable route for their shareholders. The challenge is that further entrenched, us into the monopsony, or essentially the overwhelming dependence on the U.S. market.

It gives the U.S. refiners a lot of market power in pricing discussions. That's where we go to this Northwest Coast oil pipeline. It's going to be expensive, probably upwards of $30 plus billion if we're using Trans Mountain as our comp. It's a bigger pipeline. It's going to be even less optimal route, given the length. That's a very expensive pipeline. And it can't compete on a per barrel basis with those other southbound routes.

But importantly, it provides a strategic optionality to access the Pacific Basin directly. And if it terminates in a deep water port, which is what people are hoping for, it allows us to have those big VLCC tankers that could service the, let's say, the India trade route. What is VLC. Yes, sorry, very large crude carrier. These are the largest category of tankers. And the challenge right now with the Trans Mountain system, and basically when you have a tanker that loads in Westridge and then exits at the Port of Vancouver, the port of Vancouver is too small to facilitate these big tankers. That's limited our ability to trade with India, as an example. We tried at the very beginning.

They did a bunch of ship transfers. It was complicated. They didn't love it. We do trade with India, but out of the U.S. Gulf Coast. So we ship barrels all the way to Houston and then ship one to two of these VLCCs, the big tankers, two million barrels each to VL to India per month. But I think it's a strategic, you know, mandate, really, to be able to service that trade through the Canadian, through Canadian sovereign ports and territory, because we've seen this time last year,

we were in a trade war with United States, and they were threatening to put tariffs on our oil. That threat was most consequential because we didn't have anywhere else to put the oil. We had to take their market. Okay. Is there anything that the government can do in terms of incentives to get that built faster? Yeah, I think that if that were to happen, and again, I was saying that, I think that that that Northwest Coast oil pipeline is unlikely to be built without government support, probably both from the government in Edmonton and the Crown and Ottawa. Now, there's a bunch of ways that that could look, whether or not that's direct funding for, say,

pathways to shift some of the dollars elsewhere, or they've often talked to the various parties to the MOU, have talked about indigenous co-ownership guarantees. This is something that the government could put money into that would be a subsidy without being a subsidy, if you know what I mean. Okay, very quickly, I do have to ask, you're a very busy person these days. Seems oil is all over the place. What keeps you up at night with this conflict? What keeps me up at night, I think, is the fact that so far we have had this

really sanguine market reaction to this shock. This is the big shock. This is the biggest shock in the history of the oil market, as far as easily the biggest shock of my career, and prices are not yet factoring for that. Very interesting stuff. Roy, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for your insights. Thanks for having me. I'm Jan. Thanks for watching the rundown. Do you know a young person who's struggling to find a job? Or are you a young person who's having trouble finding a job? I want you to share your experience with us. Email rundown at tb0.org or drop us a comment on our YouTube page. Until then, I will see you next week. If you're enjoying this series, please consider supporting TVO with a donation to make more insightful and thought-provoking podcast

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