Local Unemployment Rate for Youth Increases

Local unemployment rate hit nine per cent in August as younger citizens find it hard to get jobs at home.

Windsor-Essex has had a history of youth unemployment over the past six years. According to Statistics Canada, Windsor has seen youth unemployment rates as high as 24.7 per cent in 2013. These numbers can cause local youth and students to leave the area in search of job opportunities. Of those students with degrees who work in the region, one out of four are working at jobs that don’t require their levels of education. Some students take these low level jobs because they need work quickly.

Allen Dunwoody, 22, graduated from the Business Administration: Accounting program at St. Clair College but is currently employed at Mastronardi Produce.

“I found easier opportunities elsewhere and coming out of college I needed what I could get and couldn’t afford to be picky,” said Dunwoody.

One of the problems for student employment is not that the area has no opportunities, but the career path students are taking. Maureen Lucas is president and owner of LucasWorks, a job recruitment agency in Windsor. She said students have to think ahead when looking into their education.

She said she thinks people are picking careers that don’t have much local presence and this is causing students to leave the area because these jobs are elsewhere.

“I just think that people need to think long and hard when they go to school about what courses and what path they are taking. They need to look around them in the courses they are taking and say ‘either there are jobs in this community, in the courses that I’m taking, or there’s not,'” said Lucas.

The municipal election on Oct. 27 is a good opportunity for Windsor-Essex to make changes to help reduce youth unemployment rates, according to Bill Baker who is running for mayor of the town of Essex. He said an extensive service sector is important to create jobs for youth.

“What we have is an exodus of our young market because in the smaller markets especially, there is no place for them to work,” said Baker. “I believe that having a service sector is a good training ground for them to stay awhile and get trained.”

He said that having more manufacturing positions will also allow for more advanced and higher paying jobs.

Baker said plans to decrease youth unemployment in the area are underway, but these changes will take time. Baker says Windsor-Essex will need four to six years to put all the plans into action.

Maureen Lucas president and owner of LucasWorks poses in her office in Windsor on Sept. 24, 2014 (Photo by: Klay Coyle)