The Canadian economy has lost 112,000 jobs just since January. That’s the weakest four-month stretch since the pandemic. The unemployment rate has climbed to 6.9 per cent.

But a closer look at the numbers released Friday by Statistics Canada reveals two even more disturbing trends.

The job losses in the first four months of 2026 were “almost entirely concentrated in full-time work.” And young workers were harder hit by layoffs than any other age group.

Our economy has lost 111,000 full-time jobs just since January. This is concerning because full-time employees are often the top providers for their families. Having them out of work is a particular strain on families and communities.

Equally concerning, though, is the spike in youth unemployment. Young workers (those under 24) saw their unemployment rate jump to 14.3 per cent from 13.8 per cent. In 2020, before the pandemic, that rate hovered around 10 per cent.

Among workers 15 to 19, the rate is nearer 20 per cent.

According to the Fraser Institute, workers 15 to 24 have seen their unemployment rate drive up by 57 per cent in just that last three years. Whereas it took these same young workers around 10 weeks to find a job in 2022, it now takes an average 16 weeks.

Canada’s young people are also over 40 per cent less likely to have jobs than their American counterparts. Among G7 countries, only France has slightly higher youth unemployment.

Try finding a first job after high school or college, or finding a summer job to pay for tuition and books in the fall.

Just what are the causes of Canada’s terrible performance on the youth employment front?

Yes, U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and trade war have had some impact, but the bigger impacts have come from awful government policy — too little growth and too much immigration.

For instance, since 2020 the number of young, temporary students admitted to Canada has nearly quadrupled. From 2022 to 2024, the number of student visas issued by the Liberal government totalled nearly 900,000.

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But they’re students, you say. Where’s the harm?

Most of them were only technically students. They were registered for classes at career or community colleges. And I’m sure many of them attended. But the Liberals’ rules at the time enabled them to work up to 40 hours a week (now it’s 24 hours) and to stay up to two years after finishing their studies, even if that was only a six-month business diploma.

In reality, these students were another category of temporary foreign worker.

So young workers, who are the last to be hired and the first to be laid off, were quickly squeezed out of the job market. It’s not a coincidence that the spike in youth unemployment in Canada corresponds exactly with the Liberal tsunami of foreign student visas.

The other reason youth unemployment is too high is the Liberals’ record of anemic economic growth.

Through extremist environmental policies, deference to First Nations in the name of reconciliation and a high-tax, high-regulation regime, the Liberals have cost the Canadian economy nearly $1 trillion in lost investment since 2015. That has led to the slowest growth in the OECD, the organization of the world’s 38 most-developed countries.

If young people are the last to get hired and the economy is growing at a snail’s pace, there are simply going to be a lot of unemployed young people.

That can have long-term effects. As the old saying goes, you can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job. Workers who don’t find full-time jobs before age 25 may never make up the lost income.

The lack of jobs, the lack of opportunities and other crises (such the crisis in housing affordability), may well create a generation a substantial portion of whom has little hope which has all sorts of implications for politics, voting and public policy.

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