It appears that online job applications are not all they are cracked up to be.
A federal panel charged with examining unemployment among Canada’s youth is recommending a move away from digital services to for young, first-time job applicants.
In an interim report released Wednesday, the Expert Panel on Youth Unemployment said young people had much more success finding jobs through people they knew.
It said hundreds of young job seekers who filled out online applications never received a response from potential employers.
“We are deluding ourselves if we think that by digitizing the job application process we are making it more democratic,” says panel chairwoman Vass Bednar.
“Network effects are a strong as ever and this hurts young people with less social capital.”
The report said young Canadians, including job applicants with post-secondary education and previous job experience, suffer from high levels of anxiety about finding work.
Earlier this month, Statistics Canada released a study that found that the job quality of young people has declined over the past 40 years even though the rate of youth unemployment has remained relatively unchanged.
In both 1976 and 2015, the rate was 2.3 times higher than the rate of those aged 25 and older.
Canada’s overall jobless rate in November was 6.8 per cent while the youth unemployment rate across the country was 12.9 per cent.
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