Youth Unemployment Rate Nearly Doubles Under Dexter
Liberal youth critic Zach Churchill says Nova Scotia’s youth are struggling under the highest youth unemployment rates in Canada as youth unemployment, including involuntary part-time work, approaches 31.9 per cent.
“Darrell Dexter’s decisions are negatively impacting the lives of Nova Scotia’s youth,” says Churchill. “They are having a harder time getting work and are having to pay tuition that is more and more expensive each year – this will force student debt higher and new graduates out of our province.”
“High levels of youth unemployment and high levels of student debt is a toxic combination that ensures our province’s brain drain will continue.”
Churchill points to Stats Canada data showing youth unemployment, including involuntary part time work, has risen to 31.9 per cent in June 2012 from 17.9 per cent in June 2008.
“The youth unemployment rate has almost doubled under Darrell Dexter’s watch,” says Churchill. “Having the highest youth unemployment rate means one of two things will happen – outmigration will increase even though people are already leaving at an alarming pace or a new structural unemployment problem will develop and burden the next generation of Nova Scotians.”
Churchill says new graduates struggling to find work are shouldering excessive debt loads.
“Darrell Dexter has cut $75 million from the post-secondary education system,” says Churchill. “Slashing that much money from PSE is driving our tuition higher – new graduates have to repay tens of thousands of dollars in student debt while suffering from record unemployment.”
Churchill says the level of student debt will also increase because students are struggling to find a summer job and their cost of living is skyrocketing because of their grocery and power bills.
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