youth giving up on finding work

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/jobs/young-leading-exodus-from-lacklustre-canadian-labour-market/article2364070/

The country’s jobless rate fell two notches to 7.4 per cent in February, but that was because fewer people were looking for work, rather than any pickup in the labour market, Statistics Canada said Friday. The country’s labour participation rate has ebbed to its lowest level in a decade.

Young people are leading the exodus. Their jobless rate hit 14.7 per cent last month – its highest level since October, 2010 – amid five straight months of employment declines. Poor prospects mean almost 200,000 of them have left the labour force since the recession began. The youth participation rate has tumbled to a 16-month low and is approaching 1995 levels. “This is a really significant issue,” said Francis Fong, an economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank who wrote a paper this week predicting the youth jobs market will remain tough for years to come...

This generation of younger workers are our future labour force … and they are facing some pretty unique pressures that other generations didn’t have to go through,” Mr. Fong said.

He said the economic consequences will include muted consumer spending among the young, heavy debt loads and delayed home buying.

Among the university crowd, the mood is one of a deep sense of frustration...

Statscan’s broadest measure of unemployment is the so-called R8, which includes discouraged workers and those working part-time who would rather have a full-time job; that measure stood at is 11.4 per cent in February, a slight improvement from 11.7 per cent a year earlier.

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D - it can be tough to convince older folks that the times, they really are different. That growing up is tough today.
For more, check out suicide rates intergenerationally compared for youth...