But despite all that, after a full quarter-century of spinning their wheels, there were indications earlier this decade that young workers were finally making up for lost ground. It wasn’t just Martin who had seen his fortunes improve. After decades of lagging previous generations, younger workers were pulling ahead, at last. Between 1997 and 2007, hourly wages for workers under the age of 35 outpaced those for all other age groups, according to a Statistics Canada report released last year. Suddenly, with unemployment at a 30-year low and companies struggling to find workers, the new generation finally seemed to have the upper hand. “At last those groups that had been left behind were becoming more valuable as a source of labour,” says Roger Sauvé, president of People Patterns Consulting. On top of that, the younger generation was told they could expect an employment windfall as Canada’s 10 million baby boomers, fully one-third of the population, began to retire.
Then, with almost no warning, young workers ran headfirst into what may be the worst recession in decades. The economic collapse has already claimed 274,000 jobs in Canada over the past four months. Economists believe that figure could easily rise by another 200,000 by year-end, and even that could prove to be optimistic. With each round of layoffs, any hope young workers had of negotiating higher salaries is slipping away. “This generation has been screwed by demography,” says Linda Duxbury, a professor at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business. “They’ve been through a recession, a jobless recovery and stagflation, while the baby boomers got in there and clogged up all the jobs in the hierarchy,” she says. “Finally, they thought, this was going to be their time. And now we have another recession.”
Duxbury hopes that the situation for young workers will improve somewhat when the economy finally rights itself. “We had a profound labour force crisis before the recession, and when we come out of this recession, we’re still going to have a labour force crisis,” she says. Because of that, she thinks employers are being incredibly shortsighted by focusing on younger workers when it comes to layoffs. “I’m warning employers, if you treat them badly now, it’s going to come back and haunt you.” Still, depending on how long and deep this recession goes, it could certainly wipe out the meagre gains of the past few years. And if it does, then today’s young workers will have the dubious distinction of going down in history as the first Canadian generation ever to do worse than their parents.
Even if things do improve for young workers down the road, it’s cold comfort to couples such as Martin and Fisher. They’re still trying to figure out how they’ll cope with the mortgage payments and other costs of raising a family over the next few years. After catching a tantalizing glimpse of the lifestyle their parents enjoyed, now it’s back to square one. “I can’t get out of the bucket,” says Martin. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to get out when there’s no work.”
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