Apart from unemployment, the extent to which youth are employed full time is another indicator of their success or lack thereof on the labour market. This slide answers the following question: of all young individuals who are not full-time students, what percentage had a full-time job from 1976 to 2013? The slide shows that over the last three decades the percentage of youth employed full time fell for young men, both those under 25 and those aged 25 to 34, as well as for women aged 15 to 24. From 1976 to 2013 young men and women under 25 who were not full-time students saw their full-time employment rate drop by 16 and 9 percentage points respectively.
The story is different for women aged 25 to 34. Thanks to a secular growth in their labour market participation, they experienced a substantial increase in full-time employment since the mid-1970s, as we can see on the blue line looking at the right chart.
The national level trends in full-time employment shown in the previous slide mask important regional differences. Since the early 2000s the oil-producing provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, as well as Newfoundland and Labrador experienced stronger growth in young men's full-time employment rates than other provinces. For instance from 2000 to 2013, men aged 25 to 34 in oil-producing provinces saw their full-time employment rate rise by two percentage points from roughly 87 to 89 percentage points, which is the red line on the right chart. In contrast their counterparts in other provinces experienced a four percentage point decline in their full-time employment rate during that period. So really when we talk about the youth employment situation in Canada, we have to make a regional distinction.
Moving on to the next slide we also see for young women 15 to 24 that those living in oil-producing provinces, the red line, experience a greater growth in full-time employment rates than their counterparts living in the remaining provinces of Canada. For women 25 to 34, the right chart, we see an increase in full-time employment rates both in oil-producing provinces and in other provinces.
So far, we've given you an overview of the unemployment rate and the full-time employment rate for youth. We will spend the remainder of the presentation on two other key factors affecting youth employment: wages and the tendency to hold temporary jobs.
Since the early 1980s, the wages of young men in full-time jobs have not followed a linear trajectory. As these two tables show, the hourly wages of men under 25 years of age and those between 24 and 34 years of age decreased between 1981 and 2000, after accounting for inflation. And that decline was observed in both oil-producing provinces and the other provinces.
The reverse trend has emerged during the 2000s. In both groups of provinces, the hourly wages of young men rose between 2000 and 2013, with the increase being especially notable in the oil-producing provinces. In the final analysis, men between the ages of 25 and 34 working in oil-producing provinces in 2013 were found to have hourly wages about 10% higher than they had in 1981. But men under the age of 25 working in non-oil-producing provinces received, in 2013, hourly wages that were about 12% lower than what they received in 1981.
Since we are short on time, I will skip right to the summary.
In summary, while youth unemployment has remained high since the recent downturn, it is not exceptionally high by historical or international standards. Compared with the mid-1970s, the percentage of youth employed full time is now generally lower for youth aged 15 to 24, with one exception noted at the bottom of the slide, and lower for men aged 25 to 34 in non-oil-producing provinces. It is similar for men aged 25 to 34 in oil-producing provinces, and it is higher for women.
Following declines during the 1980s and the 1990s, youth wages grew during the 2000s after accounting for inflation. While wage growth during the 2000s was relatively strong among less educated workers, especially those in oil-producing provinces, higher education generally remains associated with higher wages.
In a nutshell, I will conclude by saying that, when looking at the youth employment situation in Canada, one has to make a key distinction, first by region and second by gender.
Thank you.