The Impact Of Youth Underemployment

Introduction

It is known that individuals experience high waves of unemployment after any recession; however, youth tend to experience a bigger downfall in the unemployment category. Nevertheless, the issues of youth unemployment continues to attract a great deal of attention from the government, communities and the general public influenced by the reflections that the hindrance of the 2008 recession may have fallen on Canada’s youth, Ontario’s youth feeling it the most (Youth Unemployment in Canada: Challenging Conventional Thinking?, p. 32, 2012). Five years after Canada’s “Great Recession”, youth remain largely shut out of Ontario’s slow economic recovery and while the ‘help wanted’ signs have re-emerged, youth find it hard to successful

The destruction of labour and skills that may occur due to unemployment is only part of a wide range of factors that impacts the quality of workforce opportunities between the employer and employee. Underemployment may negatively affect quality of labour, as it does not allow individuals to utilize the full range of skills possessed over time. While underemployment represents a significant issue for youth, it illustrates itself through both underutilization of skills and underutilization of labour; however, the challenge of underemployment is focused on youth in this report, it is not only unique to just youth, but is experienced by workers in all age

However, it is in the hands of the youth to find the balance between their responsibility to actively seek the most effective solutions and fitting them to apply their skills and abilities in the labour market, to successfully find work. Solutions to gaining the much needed experience to work around the issues on youth unemployment are volunteering, short-term work engagements, working nationally or globally abroad, workshops, and many more.

Volunteer work/Internships

Volunteering and internships – both unpaid, and in some lucky situations, paid are ways Canada’s youth may get their foot in the door to gaining experiences, which exposes them to the real on the job skills in the field of their choice; “having something unpaid on your CV is very worth it because that’s the one thing you can do to counteract this scarring effect. Get some real-life experience even though you’re discouraged, even if it’s for free” (Poloz, 2014). Although unpaid work is a decision no youth wants to make, volunteering is an important key to fill the gaps between jobs on their resume as well as having skills that are up to