Two weeks ago I was out in Halifax to give a keynote address at Students Nova Scotia’s Summit on Youth in the Nova Scotia Economy. Typically I don’t post my speeches online, but in this case I feel it’s important to put these ideas out for public consumption. It’s my opinion that young people in Nova Scotia face a stark dilemma: attempt to forge a future in a province that’s facing decline or go west for better employment prospects.
In the two weeks since I gave this speech the situation facing young Nova Scotians has grown more dire. Yesterday the newly minted Liberal government passed a budget that increased taxes on young people and reduced funding to post-secondary education; furthermore, this morning the government passed a regressive essential services law attacking the rights of young workers. Both developments further entrench the perception that many young Canadians have that Nova Scotia simply isn’t a viable jurisdiction to settle, start a business, or raise a family in. All of this being problematic given the immense challenges that the province is facing.
The speech below has been lightly edited for readability, but essentially mirrors my remarks of March 20, 2014.
1. Overview
I'm quite humbled that I was invited to speak to all of you and thrilled to be given this opportunity to provide some insights into the hard work that's going to be needed to be done in Nova Scotia in the near future. Thanks to Students Nova Scotia and the other sponsors for putting on this important event and to the other presenters for their thought-provoking presentations, this has certainly been a learning experience for me personally.
I feel my task here today is to offer up ideas, approaches, and frankly some solutions to the challenges that young people are facing in Nova Scotia. My talk is going to cover off two main areas. First, I'm going to sketch out at a high level what I see as Nova Scotia's current situation, highlight some of the specific problems that young people are facing, and proffer up a couple examples of what's happening on the ground. Second, I'm going to speak to the critical importance of school-to-labour market transition and the deep impacts that it has on the opportunities over the course of one's life. Then I'm going to end by presenting a vision of what the school-to-labour market transition could be, an alternative to the status-quo that reigns currently in Nova Scotia and frankly in the rest of Canada as well.
I would be remiss if I didn't offer up a proviso of sorts. I'm an outsider to here and I don't make any claims to completely understanding the social, cultural, economic, or political dynamics that impact each of you on a daily basis. I do however want everyone to understand that many of the issues I'm about to talk about have directly impacted my family as my father and two of my uncles migrated to Ontario in the 1970s in search of better opportunities. Their motivations forty years ago, be it the need to find jobs or carve out a life, left an indelible mark on who I am and how I perceive the world. I also continue to have family who live here and who still face challenging times.
So let us begin.
2. What’s Happening in Nova Scotia?
So what's happening? I want to run through some of the overarching challenges, highlight some specific labour market challenges facing youths, and then discuss a couple examples of what has been happening on the ground.
A. The Current Path that Nova Scotia is On
The Ivany Commission comments about Nova Scotia facing the threat of long-term decline are accurate. Simply put, there an existential crisis of sorts developing and pervasive sense of declinism that has been building for decades. Nova Scotia faces a series of immense challenges and there is the very real threat of decline. There's a need to confront the realities of where Nova Scotia is headed. Overall, right now, the Nova Scotia is on the path to being smaller, older, and less flexible.
There are a number of changes afoot in Nova Scotia and I want to touch on a few of the overarching trends that I see. We’re seeing a continued transition to a knowledge-based, service economy. There’s a reduced reliance on natural resource industries and manufacturing. There's going to be slower economic growth, comparatively, to the rest of Canada and other maritime provinces and states.
On the topic of the economy, central to the understanding what has been occurring is acknowledging that Canada is increasingly being driven by regional economies, such as the oil patch in Alberta or Toronto’s finance and service sectors. These economic realities are contributing to uneven growth and are creating the conditions which make it far more difficult for smaller provinces to compete.
Deep demographic challenges are occurring and Nova Scotia is becoming an older society. The birthrate has been on the decline and it’s far below replacement level. There’s an out-migration of youths occurring, both among females and males, Nova Scotia has an aging population and one that is predicted to shrink over the next twenty years. There's is going to be an increased time crunch as people care for children and older parents, this burden is going to unevenly fall on women. All of these demographic changes will cause pressures within workplaces as there becomes a scarcity of working aged adults and the labour force begin to shrink.
Nova Scotia is becoming more urbanized, with a shift towards Halifax and environs. This is bringing increased tension between rural-urban populations; particularly for young people in rural regions of the province, who may be unable to access services or obtain jobs.
B. What are the specific labour market challenges at Nova Scotia is facing?
What we're seeing amid this shift towards the knowledge economy in Nova Scotia is some alarming trends. My analysis indicates that what’s occurring is nothing less than deep generational fracturing with young people either accepting a reduced quality of life here or heading west towards the greener pastures of Ontario, Saskatchewan, Fort Mac, or even increasingly Newfoundland. The old employment model where workers would spend much of their careers with a single employer is declining and the new economy that young Nova Scotians are facing is one of economic uncertainty and reduced attachments to the labour market. Let's run through some of the trends that I've identified.
There is a youth jobs crisis. The youth unemployment in Nova Scotia currently sits at approximately 19% and the rate of underemployment is far above that. These rates are similar to countries in Europe which were ravaged by the fallout from the financial crisis. Precarious work, characterized by casual, temp, contract positions, often with no benefits is becoming the new normal for many young people in Nova Scotia. Breaking into a full-time job is tough for young workers across the province, but particularly in rural areas that have relied on natural resources or manufacturing. Many employers here in Nova Scotia are quite content to hire Temporary Foreign Workers and avoid hiring young workers altogether for a variety of reasons.
There are any number of structural problems within the education system, both at the secondary and at the post-secondary levels. There aren’t an abundance of opportunities for transitioning students into co-op, apprenticeship, pre-apprenticeship placements, and other forms of work-integrated learning. The average age of new apprentices in Nova Scotia is approximately twenty-eight, the current system of training is under-resourced, and currently the apprenticeship system is in a state of upheaval. Many apprentices can’t find continuing opportunities here and often leave for Alberta.
The tuition rates in Nova Scotia are extremely high and the impact arising from student debt is a driver of the out-migration that we’re seeing among young people. Through blunt public policy, you’re driving away the very talent this province needs to turn itself around. Exacerbating some of the overall trends is the level of debt that international students incur, which is a group that Nova Scotia is increasing relying upon and needs to do a better job of attracting and keeping.
Young workers face a highly fluid labour market with few individual protections, this is a theme that we will return to later. A relative decline in the amount of social solidarity and a reduced role of the social welfare state leaves young workers very vulnerable to shifts in the economy. This can range from difficulties in accessing Employment Insurance or if young people can’t find work and go on social assistance the rates aren’t often enough to provide a base from which to find secure employment.
The lack of opportunities in Nova Scotia is have a profound effect on young people, this lack of opportunity is driving thousands of young people away from settling permanently here. Over the past forty years there has been a persistent trend which has seen young people, often highly skilled and educated, move away for better opportunities. The vast majority of this out-migration is occurring in the twenty to thirty-five demographic, clearly these are people who you don’t want to be losing.
C. What Has Been Happening on the Ground?
Despite the challenges I highlight above, I don’t want to leave any of you thinking that there aren’t a examples of people building great organizations.
From the early labour activism of the Tailors' Society in Halifax, the Antigonish Cooperative Movement, the Halifax Advisory Committee on Human Relations, and the Black United Front - Nova Scotia certainly has examples of groups coming together to respond to social, cultural, and economic problems. Nova Scotia also has a history of addressing youth issues, from the first legislation protecting apprentices back in 1759 to Dalhousie’s Transition Year Program which has helped many youths from historically marginalized communities. Nova Scotia’s history is littered with examples of people responding to changing times.
Despite these past successes, I want to share a couple concrete examples with you that give me pause and wonder about what’s really happening on the ground. See, labour market policy has never been terribly sexy within government and there’s a tendency on the part of politicians to chase headlines with big-ticket policy announcements over supporting the difficult work that community-oriented groups undertake day-in and day-out.
On the issue of training, I’m concerned about the impact arising out of the implementation of the Canada Job Grant program. While I’ve always been a strong proponent of government assisting businesses in meeting their training needs, I’m worried about the looming cuts to Labour Market Agreement funding which will reduce the capacity of non-profit organizations to service groups with reduced labour market attachment.
I worry what the future will hold for innovative programs operated the Trades Pipeline Project, which links youths with opportunities in the skilled trades, or the member organizations of the Collaborative Partnership Network, which are about to endure significant cuts resulting from reduced Federal funding and an unwillingness on the part of provincial government to provide secure funding. This strikes me as an irrational policy decision amid a period when Nova Scotia needs to building capacity to deliver expanded training and employment supports for historically marginalized segments of the population.
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| Canada's first unionized coffee-shop. |
The Barristas Rise Up campaign and the subsequent unionization of two coffee shops in Halifax this past year is unusual for a number of reasons, both for precarious nature of the work and the age of the organizers. It appears that young people, who are increasingly taking-on survival type jobs, becoming more interested in unions out of sheer economic necessity. A decade ago a union drive of this sort probably wouldn't have happened. Young people are increasingly seeing low-skilled, dead-end positions in the service industry as a permanent reality that must be confronted.
3. The School-To-Labour Market Transition
Now that I’ve set the scene, I’m going to speak about the school-to-labour market transition and discuss its central importance to creating a vibrant, sustainable economy in Nova Scotia.
Youths across Canada are facing difficulties transitioning from school into the world of work due to a variety of factors. Globalization, technological change, government and corporate downsizing, and organizational restructuring have caused profound structural realignments within the Canadian economy over the past two decades. Young people, in Canada and other advanced industrial economies, are in the unfortunate position of being outsiders to an economy in transition and have been particularly hard hit in the wake of the recession.
The position of young workers is really impaired by forces beyond its control. Consider this quote from Rachel Pulfer: “For those aged 40 and under, breaking into a profession today usually requires shouldering significant debt in education or skills development, then undergoing a grim cycle of unpaid or low-paid internships, leading to a cycle of underpaid or insecure contract positions. Employers expect constant outperformance in return for few benefits, minimal pay - and virtually no long-term commitment.”
The school-to-labour market transition is a key feature of young adulthood, a period filled with major life events, aside from labour market entry this period typically corresponds with moving out of the parental home, the formation of relationships, and starting families. These are significant events which shape the rest of a person’s life.
For young people who enter the labour market amid difficult economic conditions there can be life altering effects arising from the periods of unemployment and underemployment, the need to accept lower quality jobs with reduced wages and benefits, and delays in progressing in their careers. Research shows that young people who enter the labour market in difficult times face the aforementioned problems and continue to suffer long-term consequences. Young people today are the victims of a changing economic fortunes and will inevitably bear long-terms scars from their initial difficulties in entering the labour market. We're seeing the proliferation of a generation of young people who cannot find jobs that compare to those of their parents.
For Nova Scotia, the lack of responsive public policy is certainly driving young people away, be it people born here, international students, or young people coming to study here from other provinces. I literally know dozens of people who came here to study, but the sense I got from past conversations was that settling in Nova Scotia wasn’t feasible in the long-term. The reality is that for many young people, this province doesn’t offer secure measures to transition from school into the labour market. The question is: what can be done to address this growing problem?
4. So What Can Be Done?
To close off my talk, I'm going to put forward some ideas that could form not only the basis of a youth responsive labour market, but also create a society that values the current and future contributions that young people and their families make. These ideas are in pursuit of a vision for a better labour market in Nova Scotia. My purpose here is not to simply lay out a set concrete policy responses, but an inclusive framework which can be adapted to inform the creation of a more effective labour market that works for all generations. Attracting young people to Nova Scotia, and keeping them here, is really one of the only solutions to increase productivity, boost economic growth, bring some stability to demographic trends, and reduce future vulnerability to economic shocks.
Young people need to be meaningfully engaged in policy setting, decision making, and program delivery related to secondary and post-secondary education, training initiatives, and labour market programs. Responses to the needs of young people can't just be led by government, no, to develop an effective response to the host of problems facing the province there needs to buy in from a wide array of stakeholders, such as industry groups, labour unions, educational institutions, citizen organizations, and non-profit organizations. No one group holds all the answers, and only through collaboration can Nova Scotian society develop the necessary tools to overcome the challenges you all face going forward.
These ideas are premised on four pillars. The first holds that going forward public policy must be designed in a fashion that supports young people and young families. The second focuses on laying the groundwork for future economic growth via smart investment today in the labour force of tomorrow. The third focuses on making Nova Scotia a jurisdiction where young people and their families are respected, cherished, and valued as a prime resource. The fourth holds that young people need a sense of economic stability and security in their lives.
So what are some of the solutions?
A. Embedding Workforce Development as a Central Part of Economic Development
It's critical to invest today in the creation of the dynamic workforce of tomorrow. Alongside a push for more research, greater innovation, and investments in infrastructure needs to be a commitment to workforce development. Simply put, training opportunities for young people need to be a central focus of any growth agenda. Effective strategies need to be identified and then implemented rapidly. Young people need to be put at the centre of Nova Scotia’s vision for the labour market of the future. This means creating the systems to link young people with training in skills that employers need and where the good jobs are; furthermore, government resources should be used to assist industries and employers that are offering stable, secure employment in good jobs.
B. Creating a Decentralized Training Culture
Picking up on the points on workforce development. Industry, government, post-secondary institutions, and community organizations need to build a decentralized training culture where skills development, employee training, and lifelong learning can occur. Developing career ladders, that not only assist young workers with finding entry-level work, but also work to build intentional and explicit pathways for workers to progress in their chosen fields and move into jobs requiring greater levels of skills.
Nova Scotia needs to utilize economies of scale to spread training costs over entire industries, so that individual businesses don’t have to shoulder costs that they can’t bear. Beyond the, there has to be the realization that non-profit organizations and local communities are often in the best positioned to implement training programs that link workers to actual jobs - this is a model that has been proven effective time and time again in engaging groups with lower levels of labour market attachment.
C. A Multiple Entry System for Gaining Workplace Experience
Government, non-profit organizations, employer, and educational institutions all have come together to create system where the young people can access training, job opportunities, and education at various points. A lot more thought has to go into a creation of system that humanely transitions young people from school into the world of work and we need to see a greater deployment of apprenticeships, youth entrepreneurship, co-op programs, and paid internships. These training initiatives not only need to be expanded for the skilled trades, but also expanded in scope to include careers in the service and knowledge economies. The move to a service oriented economy is a long-term shift and young people need the ability to start the transition into careers at multiple points, such as during or after graduation from high school, during their post-secondary years, or after they have completed their education.
D. Adequate Protections in the Workplace
Young people need to be able to access protections in the workplace. Unionization isn’t really an option for many young employees and certainly there isn’t enough being done to protect young workers. In a sense, this is a critical talent retention strategy as young people can vote with their feet and leave. The Department of Labour and Advanced Education needs to do a far better job of ensuring that the rights of young workers are protected in Nova Scotia’s workplaces, especially with the explosion of precarious work in this province.
E. Renewing the Social Contract
Trends like globalization, automation, technological change aren't going anywhere, and increasingly it’s clear that we need a renewed social contract that responds to the needs of young workers engaged in the school-to-labour market transition and in the early years of their careers. Nova Scotia needs to become a jurisdiction that is known for public policy that is responsive to the needs of young workers and young families.
What this is would look like is an open question, but the design of the social safety net needs to address the growing realities of precarious work and the changes afoot in the labour market amid the new economy. This could come in various forms, in other parts of Canada young people are pushing ideas like guaranteed annual income, affordable childcare, rent control, and creating a generous parental leave system.
F. Implement a Nova Scotia Youth Guarantee Program
Youth guarantee programs have been highly successful in parts of Europe. These programs target young people under thirty and streams them towards resources that enhance employability and better outcomes in the school-to-labour market transition. Through the use of integrated activities which use job seeking as a departure point these programs link young people to resources to find employment, but can also utilize other strategies if job seeking is unsuccessful, such as educational and vocational guidance, job search coaching, work experience, business start up grants, or employability rehabilitation.
G. Supporting Entrepreneurialism
Innovation hubs at universities, colleges or within the community, such as Digital Media Zone at Ryerson University, Accelerator Centre in Waterloo, or the Centre for Social Innovation and MaRS in Toronto. I’ve heard about the Hub here in Halifax and this is the exact model that needs to be utilized in developing a culture of entrepreneurship amongst young workers and building regional capacities. A warning though, as wonderful as entrepreneurship is, do understand that this will not be fix-all for youth unemployment as self-employment is not an ideal situation for many people in society and oftentimes serves to mask inadequate income security and inadequate workplace protections.
5. Conclusion
Don’t think for a second that your leaders hold all the answers, because they don’t. If they did, I wouldn’t be standing here and you would be facing a far more secure future.
I want to end this on a positive note. Three years no one was taking the issue of unpaid internships seriously. Through my work, and that of my counterparts, we’ve put the issue on the agenda and are starting to get concrete action. The same thing with Paul Kershaw, before him and the development of Generation Squeeze, it had been a long time since notions of intergenerational equity had play in the mainstream discussions.
What this means is that going forward, it’s up to all of you to forge a different kind of social, economic, and political climate. While it’s necessary to understand the past, don’t be defined by it. It is an absolute necessity that young people organize and put forward a vision of what you want society to look like for you and your children. Together you will be able to overcome the challenges facing Nova Scotia and build a brighter future.
Thanks, that’s all I have for today.
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