Community groups call for more youth job opportunities in Toronto

Community groups are calling on the City of Toronto to create 10,000 additional summer jobs for youth next year as a way to address high youth violence rates through employment opportunities.

The Toronto Youth Cabinet (TYC) hosted a summit at city hall on Tuesday, in partnership with other local groups, to highlight the growing need for youth in the city to have access to jobs. 

TYC executive director Stephen Mensah says creating a summer youth employment program for 2025 to open up more jobs is "critical," as the city faces a growing number of incidents of violence involving young people at the same time as youth unemployment rates remain high.

"We need to provide young people with a good job, a meaningful job, a gainful job to ensure that we lower violence in [Toronto], as well as to ensure that we address the youth unemployment rate as well," Mensah said in an interview Tuesday.

The number of young people charged with firearms offences between Jan. 1 and July 7 this year more than doubled to 107 from 41 when compared to the same period in 2022, according to Toronto police statistics.

"We know the key to addressing poverty is employment," Mensah said.

"Young people are disproportionately perpetrating carjackings. Firearm arrests are high in respects to young people. And all that's happened due to the fact that young people are facing poverty."

Youth job opening targets 'not ambitious': advocate

The youth unemployment rate for people between the ages of 15 and 24 rose 0.9 percentage points to 13.5 per cent in June compared to the same time last year, according to Statistics Canada's monthly Labour Force Survey released last month. It's the highest the rate has been since September 2014, with exception made for 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mensah said the 8,000 job openings in the city's parks and recreation department this summer is not enough, adding that him and other advocates are calling for 10,000 additional openings across the city.

"The reality is youth unemployment is at a decade high, and so our targets are clearly not ambitious," Mensah said. 

"Now is the time for unprecedented and bold investments because young people deserve that and young people require that now more than ever."

Serena Nudel, director of community programs with The Neighbourhood Group, said the groups advocating for the program are looking for much more than just a summer job for young people. 

"We're looking for pathways to employment and pathways to meaningful and gaining full employment for future success for young people," Nudel said.

"We need to be able to guide youth and walk with them to get the jobs that they need. We're looking to add not only a job, [but] also mentorship, about those wrap-around supports, about connections to people who are able to provide opportunities for youth in the long term."

Job search a difficult journey, says youth rep

Coleen Dudley, an 18-year-old youth representative at the summit, said getting a job has proven to be a difficult journey. 

Dudley, who just graduated from high school, said she wants to study behavioural science to work with youth who may be trapped in cycles of violence.

"I know that I want to work in researching why people do the things that they do, their behaviour, because that's ... very important to me," Dudley said.

She said that she specifically wants to work with at-risk youth in part because she has lived in the Jane and Finch area, a high density and low-income neighbourhood that has been heavily stigmatized due to crime rates. Before beginning her post-secondary education, she said she hopes to mentor other young teens in the area.

"When I was 16, I feel like it was way easier for me to get jobs compared to now," she said. "There's a lot more kids that are out there striving for greatness, which I love to see, but it makes it so much more difficult for everybody [looking for jobs]."

Dudley added that she would like to see a summer employment program act as a gateway to help other youth who are experiencing the same obstacles in getting a job access more opportunities.

Toronto Mayor Chow said the city's parks and recreation department has already hit its targets for new jobs this summer. 

"We want to hire locally. We want young people to feel that there's upward mobility in being hired by the city so that they can become a leader in their community, they can be a role model in their community. That is our goal," Chow said at an unrelated news conference Tuesday.

Some 3,000 additional jobs were added to the city's summer recreation programs this year, she said. That is in addition to 5,000 staff already employed with the city's parks and recreation department.

"So in total 5,000 [jobs] existing, plus the 3,000 new ones for the summer. That's 8,000 in total and we hit the target," she said.

On Wednesday, Chow hosted a roundtable on youth violence with community groups and police at city hall. She said there is more work to do to support youth and prevent violence involving young people.

"Listening to each other, listening to young people, working together, take the best practices and invest. Those are the five things we're going to be doing," she said at a news conference after the roundtable.