Canada has a paradox at the heart of its labour market. The country leads the G7 for the most educated workforce and is producing more graduates than ever before. Yet for millions of young Canadians, the path from school to stable work has never been harder.

Between 2022 and 2025, vacancies for jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree and fewer than three years of experience fell by more than half.

About 40 per cent of Canadian graduates are underemployed, and youth unemployment reached 15 per cent in September 2025, more than double the adult rate and the highest in 15 years outside the pandemic.

The familiar diagnosis of a skills gap is not wrong, but it focuses on the wrong problem. The problem isn’t just skills; it’s that the system that converts learning into recognized workplace performance is broken.

Our new report, Entry-Level Employment: The Canary in Canada’s Labour Market Coal Mine, argues that the collapse of entry-level opportunities should not be viewed narrowly as an isolated challenge unique to a generation of young people.

It’s an early warning of broader challenges facing Canada’s labour market. To build a more productive economy, we must start by rebuilding the system that converts learning into recognized performance.

Eroding conversion infrastructure

Entry-level jobs were never just jobs. They were part of a larger system that converted learning into labour-market value. This system delivered four functions: skills were developed and refined under supervision, professional identities were formed, networks were built and capability became visible........

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