Directorates
·	Director General's Office
·	Data Development
·	Strategic Evaluations
·	Partnership and Continuous Evaluations
Publications
·	Evaluation Reports
·	Evaluation Briefs
·	Labour Market Development Agreement Series
·	Lessons Learned Series
·	Evaluation Tool Kit Series
·	Evaluation Forum Newsletter
·	From Theory To Practice

This profile is based on demographic information as well as information concerning the education and labour-market performance of the youth cohort. The profile pays particular attention to how the circumstances of the youth cohort have changed over time and what is anticipated in the future. This time-series approach allows us to address the extent to which the challenges and difficulties faced by youth continue to evolve. Note that for this profile³, we have defined a youth to be an individual aged 15 to 24.

2.1 Youth Population Trends

As illustrated in Exhibit 2.1, the size of the youth cohort has changed substantially over the past 20 years and will continue to change over the next 20. First, we see that between 1976 and 1996 the population of the youth cohort dropped by 14%. This is due to the fact that 1976 was near the end of the population growth spurt caused by the baby boom generation (those born between 1946 and 1964), and as such, the size of the youth cohort in 1976 was relatively large.

View Exhibit 2.1

Furthermore, we see that not only has the youth cohort decreased in an absolute sense, its size relative to the total working age population (individuals 15 to 64) has decreased by an even greater magnitude. The 10 percentage point decrease between 1976 and 1996 in the youth share of the total working age population represents a decline of 34%, meaning that the youth cohort now represents a substantially smaller proportion of the total working age population.

The projected demographic composition of the youth cohort after 1996 reveals that by 2016 the youth population is expected to grow by 16%, returning to its 1976 level. However, the youth share of the working age population will remain at 1996 levels since most of the baby boom generation will still be of working age.

2.2 Education

Given the range of ages that the youth cohort encompasses, this discussion of youth education begins at the high school level and is followed by a discussion of the college and university level.

High School

Two obvious choices as an indicator of the degree of high school education are dropout rates and enrolment rates. However, neither indicator is without drawbacks. High school dropout rates have typically not been well captured by administrative data sources and while high school enrolment rates are available, the lack of national time-series data for these rates makes documenting their trend difficult. Instead, the indicator selected for this analysis is high school completion rates.

The HRDC–Statistics Canada School Leavers Follow-up Survey shows that amongst all 22 to 24 year olds in 1995, 85% had completed high school. The proportion of males who had completed was markedly lower, at 81%, than females at 89%. Exhibit 2.2 illustrates how these proportions vary across provinces both by gender and in total.

College and University

Less than half of the proportions of high school graduates (from cohort shown in Exhibit 2.2) were enrolled in some form of post-secondary or tertiary education one year following the initial survey. This proportion of 40% in 1996 was the highest net enrolment of all OECD countries, and indeed was almost twice the mean enrolment rate of 22% for these countries. Statistics Canada’s published data, presented in Exhibit 2.3, show that post-secondary enrolments rose steadily between 1976 and 1996. Furthermore, the proportion of students within the youth cohort has increased, and while fairly unchanged for those 15 to 19, has been steadily increasing for those aged 20 to 24.

2.3 Labour Market

While both demographics and education come to bear on our profile of youth, the question of primary interest is how the youth cohort have fared in the Canadian labour market. In order to examine this, we have utilized a number of measures or indicators of labour market success. We see in Exhibit 2.4 that the youth labour force participation rate in Canada began a marked downward trend after 1989.

The Labour Force Survey indicates that, since 1989, 44% of the decline in youth labour force participation has been due to increased school enrolment and 38% has been due to declining student participation in the labour market. The remaining 18% is accounted for by declining labour force participation rates for non-students. HRDC research (What is Happening to Canadian Youth? Applied Research Branch (mimeo), HRDC) suggests that this fall in the labour force participation rate is permanent and related to youth perceptions of the importance of acquiring skills to help ensure a more stable and fruitful attachment to the labour force. The perceptions of youth are confirmed in Exhibit 2.5 below which indicates that youth with some post-secondary education (PSE) — a post-secondary certificate or diploma or university degree — have lower unemployment rates than those with high-school education or less. Although it is not noted in Exhibit 2.5, the trend in the unemployment rate for individuals with some PSE is slightly higher than for individuals who have a PSE certificate or diploma.

Note that the unemployment rate of those with less than high-school education has worsened markedly over the past 20 years. We see in Exhibit 2.6 the unemployment rate of youth in aggregate compared with persons 25 years old and over. The youth unemployment rate is almost double the unemployment rate for the population aged 25 and over. Relatively high unemployment rates in the early 1990’s have affected youth more seriously than Canadians over 25. Labour Force Survey data for 1996 indicates that for the first time in the past 20 years, the two unemployment rates moved in opposite directions, with the situation for youth getting worse while individuals over 25 were more likely to be employed than in the previous year. While one year does not make a trend, these results may indicate that youth experienced difficulty in participating in the growth in employment opportunities that occurred in 1996. If so, this is a very different phenomenon than occurred starting in 1983 when youth benefited from a growth in jobs to a much greater degree than adults 25 and older.

An examination of Exhibit 2.7 indicates that average annual earnings vary by the level of education completed. The earnings for those persons having completed post-secondary education are much greater than those who have not completed PSE.

Source: Statistics Canada, Catalogue No. 13-217-XPB, January 1997

While the unemployment rates for youth completing post-secondary education (PSE) are comparable to the working population aged 15 and over, the unemployment rates for youth having a secondary education or less are much higher. As well, earnings for those persons having completed PSE are much greater than for those not completing PSE.

Footnotes

3	The definition of youth used in this profile was selected because of data availability. Note that this definition differs from that used to determine YES program eligibility (youth under 30) and may therefore impact conclusions that can be drawn from this profile.