Young Canadians are generally having a tough time finding jobs right now… but things may be easier depending on where you live. According to research from Indeed, young people could be better off looking for a job in smaller Canadian cities. In smaller cities like Saguenay, Québec, 80% of young folks are working — more than 30 percentage points higher than Toronto’s 46%. Québec City and B.C.’s Kelowna are also doing better than major cities, with youth employment rates hovering around 75%. According to Brendon Bernard, a senior economist at Indeed, places with higher proportions of people aged 85 and older tend to have more job openings because retirement creates vacancies that trickle down to young people. If you moved to one of these cities, it also helps that many of them have a much lower cost of living. For example, the average rent for a one-bedroom in Toronto is $2,511, compared to a one-bedroom apartment in Saguenay that costs $1,020. But don’t get too excited… While it may be easier to land a job in one of these smaller cities, you won’t make as much as you would in a major city like Toronto, where the average entry-level salary is $67,464 a year, compared to $44,772 in Saguenay.
