The Contribution of Full-time Students to the Canadian Unemployment Rate, 1976-2017

This report analyzes the relationship between full-time students aged 15 to 24 and unemployment in Canada for the 1976-2017 period. Over the past 4 decades, the stock of unemployed full-time students has increased by 87 thousand, from 43 thousand in 1976 to 130 thousand in 2017. As a result, the share of the total unemployment represented by fulltime students has increased from 5.7 percent in 1976 to 10.4 percent in 2016. Full-time students did not participate in a secular decline in the unemployment rate to the extent experienced by the majority in the Canadian labour force from the mid 1990s. This led full-time students to become an increasingly important factor in driving the total unemployment rate in Canada. Our analysis shows that excluding full-time students from the labour force results in a lower Canadian unemployment rate in 2017, 6.0 percent instead of 6.3 percent. The lion’s share of the difference in the unemployment rate is a result of excluding 15 to 19 year olds pursuing full-time studies, a demographic which often face less economic hardship but are nonetheless allotted an identical weighting in the unemployment rate as unemployed adults. Moreover, the contribution of full-time students to the unemployment rate has increased over six fold during the 1976-2017 period.