Earlier this month, Statistics Canada released their results of the July 2024 Labour Market Survey.
Shortly after that, Conservative federal politicians started tweeting about Canada’s youth unemployment rate.
Here is Brad Vis, MP for Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford.
Here is one from Doug Shipley, MP for Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte.
Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the party quotetweeted Shipley’s tweet.
And all this outrage at the unprecedented high youth unemployment rate made me curious to see how it broke down by province.
So, I went through the Labour Force Survey data and compiled the youth unemployment numbers since July 2015.
Keep in mind that the dataset everyone keeps referencing is for those in the labour force who are available to work but cannot find work and who are between 15 and 24 years old.
First, here is a look at last month’s data.
| AB | 20.3% |
| ON | 16.0% |
| NB | 14.5% |
| NS | 14.0% |
| NL | 13.8% |
| SK | 12.7% |
| BC | 12.1% |
| QC | 11.4% |
| MB | 10.3% |
| PEI | 9.8% |
Alberta led the way in youth unemployment, more than 4 points ahead of Ontario, which was in second place, and more than 10 points ahead of PEI, which had the lowest youth unemployment rate.
As well, Alberta was the only province to crack the 20% mark.
The average between the province was 13.5% (that differs slightly from the federal rate, because the federal rate also includes the territories). If we exclude Alberta, the average is 12.7%, so Alberta’s rate is a significant driver of the federal rate.
Looking at just one month might be great for generating outrage, but it does not really tell us if this is an anomaly or a sign that things are worsening.
Here is the youth unemployment rate for each province between July 2015 and July 2025.
Alberta is that black line. It is a pretty busy graph, so it may be tough to get a lot from this. Let me highlight a few things I noticed.
For the first 7 months of 2025, Alberta had the second highest average youth unemployment rate.
| NL | 16.4% |
| AB | 16.1% |
| ON | 16.0% |
| NB | 14.4% |
| BC | 13.3% |
| NS | 12.7% |
| MB | 11.5% |
| SK | 11.3% |
| QC | 10.0% |
| PEI | 9.3% |
In fact, if we separate the averages out by month, we see that Alberta had the highest youth unemployment of all provinces 3 times.
| Jan 2025 | Feb 2025 | Mar 2025 | Apr 2025 | May 2025 | Jun 2025 | Jul 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL | 16.6 | 18.0 | 16.4 | 16.8 | 15.7 | 17.4 | 13.8 |
| PEI | 6.1 | 10.8 | 10.2 | 6.6 | 12.0 | 9.4 | 9.8 |
| NS | 13.0 | 11.9 | 11.6 | 13.6 | 11.7 | 13.1 | 14.0 |
| NB | 10.7 | 16.2 | 14.0 | 15.4 | 14.3 | 15.5 | 14.5 |
| QC | 9.1 | 7.8 | 8.8 | 10.9 | 10.2 | 11.5 | 11.4 |
| ON | 17.1 | 15.5 | 16.4 | 15.8 | 15.5 | 15.8 | 16.0 |
| MB | 12.0 | 12.2 | 11.9 | 10.3 | 11.9 | 11.7 | 10.3 |
| SK | 11.7 | 13.5 | 11.4 | 9.8 | 7.8 | 12.0 | 12.7 |
| AB | 13.3 | 13.1 | 15.1 | 17.2 | 17.2 | 16.4 | 20.3 |
| BC | 12.0 | 12.9 | 13.3 | 13.4 | 16.6 | 13.0 | 12.1 |
We also had the highest youth unemployment rate 3 times last year: in January (15.1%), February (15.1%), and October (15.8%).
However, it was only twice in 2023: November (14.4%) and December (14.5%). That means Alberta had the highest youth unemployment rate for 4 months straight: from November 2023 through February 2024.
We have to go back to 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic before we see Alberta’s youth unemployment rate take the top spot again.
In fact, we had the highest youth unemployment rate among all the provinces 8 times in 2020, starting with March, the month when public health protections first went into effect.
Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia were the only other provinces that had the highest youth unemployment in 2020, after public health protections took effect, and each of them were in the top spot only once.
In the 4 years prior to the UCP gained power—from July 2015 to April 2019—the province never had the highest youth unemployment rate among the provinces. However, since the UCP took power, Alberta took the top spot 16 times, half of which occurred in just the last 2 years.
Let me put it another way. Here is the average youth unemployment rate for Alberta, relative to all the other provinces, for every year since July 2015.
Keep in mind that 2015 and 2025 are partial years.
| 2015* | 9th |
| 2016 | 6th |
| 2017 | 4th |
| 2018 | 5th |
| 2019 | 4th |
| 2020 | 1st |
| 2021 | 2nd |
| 2022 | 6th |
| 2023 | 3rd |
| 2024 | 3rd |
| 2025* | 2nd |
Before the UCP formed government for the first time, in 2019, Alberta never had more than the 4th highest youth unemployment rate. Since the UCP were first elected, Alberta has been below 4th highest only once.
In other words, Alberta averaged 6th place before the UCP were elected and 3rd place after they were elected.
The problem is clearly more than just how many times Alberta has had the highest youth unemployment rate; it is the fact that it is higher just generally speaking, even if not always the highest.
Now, I am not saying the UCP directly caused youth unemployment to be so high. After all, correlation does not always equal causation. (Just because it has been higher under the UCP does not mean the UCP did it.)
Whatever the cause, it is pretty clear that the UCP are doing very little to prevent it.
