Workforce WindsorEssex is launching some initiatives designed to address the high youth unemployment rate in the region.
According to Workforce WindsorEssex, the youth unemployment rate for ages 15 to 24 was 18.2 per cent in 2024, the highest youth unemployment rate among all CMAs that year, and, on average, the local youth unemployment rate is 2.4 times higher than the unemployment rate for ages 25 and over.
The overall local unemployment rate stood at 11.2 per cent in June, the highest in Canada.
Workforce WindsorEssex Project Coordinator Mikal Fakhreddin says the barriers young people are facing in finding a job include an oversaturation of the market.
"When there are employment gaps, people who are overqualified tend to go for entry-level barrier work, and those are usually youth-focused jobs, so they're taking some of the jobs away from youth, which is standard and happens everywhere," she says. "A few other things we found in the Youth Advisory Committee: youth lack a little bit of confidence when it comes to writing resumes."
The Youth Employment Project, supported by a $189,000 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, is a two-year project that's been researching ways to identify trends in youth unemployment and develop strategies to address the issues.
As part of the project, a Youth Employment Portal was launched Wednesday, offering a site for youth-focused tools and resources.
Fakhreddin says the portal links to the Workforce WindsorEssex job page, but there is a special filter.
"Usually if you go to a job board, you'll see thousands of jobs, and none of them are ones youth can apply for; they're underqualified, or they don't have the education. We just removed that barrier completely; they can click on a pre-filtered job board and see jobs they can apply for right now as young workers," she says.
The overall plan also recommends the community develop a youth job seekers club, employer and educator networking events, demand-based programming, and a youth bus pass to ensure those looking for work can get to where they need to go.
Fakhreddin says they hope the recommendations can be developed with partners in the community.
"Access to devices is a big one, as are community spaces and making sure they have the WiFi and the resources to apply for jobs if they find they are confident enough to do that," she says. "We also just want to give them that confidence; one of the recommendations is a youth job seekers club. We want to be able to be there to do resume help."
The figures also show that certain races experience significantly higher youth unemployment rates than average, notably, Chinese (25%), West Asian (26%), Arab (27%), and Black (28%) youth.
The male youth unemployment rate is consistently significantly higher than the female youth unemployment rate in Windsor-Essex, especially in 2024, where it reached 22.1 per cent compared to the female rate of 14 per cent.
Fakhreddin says they found that the industries that tend to hire youth are usually hiring women—service industry, restaurants, and recreation jobs.