Executive Summary

For Canadian youth, the school-to-work transition is a difficult and lengthy road. A school-towork transition for Canadian youth takes on average eight years which is two years longer than it did 20 years ago (Statistics Canada, 2000). While the increase in the length of time is due in part to the increased time Canadian youth stay in school, there is also evidence that it takes them longer than ever before to find full-time work after they graduate. The youth unemployment rate (10.6%) remains almost double that of the adult rate (6%) despite record years of employment in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2007). The youth unemployment rate in 2007 is the best it has been in over 20 years. Notwithstanding these gains in the employment rate of youth, more youth are ending up in low-skilled jobs despite having education credentials that far exceed the skills and knowledge required for the job and more youth are also ending up in jobs that are unrelated to their field of study.

The Canadian Council on Learning’s Work and Learning Knowledge Centre (WLKC) wanted to know what measures were in place in Canada to support youth in this transition. They consulted with their Access and Transition working groups about how to move forward with this research. During this consultation, the working groups proved to be a good resource for identifying existing school-to-work policies, practices and programs. The working group members are from an assortment of education, business, non-profit, labour, community-based training organizations. To compile the data for the inventory, WLKC contracted with the Canadian Career Development Foundation (CCDF). CCDF built the inventory by:

• conducting a literature review of the state of school-to-work transitions in Canada and the measures for success for initiatives aimed at improving transitions outcomes; and,
• surveying selected WLKC members as key informants to identify school-to-work transition practices, programs and policies.

The literature review revealed that there has been an evolution in school-to-work programming in Canada. Initially, these initiatives focussed on at-risk youth and youth who would graduate from high school and move directly into the labour force. As a result of the increased length of time it takes to make this transition in Canada, these programs have expanded in the last 10 years to include youth broadly. The inventory highlights initiatives that are directed to youth who have:

• graduated or are about to graduate from high school;
• left high school without graduating or are at-risk of doing so;
• entered the labour market after high school;
• entered post-secondary education (PSE);
• made PSE program and level changes; and,
• left PSE by graduating or dropping out.

The literature review also highlighted a number of factors for the increase in time it takes Canadian youth to make this transition. The research indicated that:

• In the knowledge economy, increasing requirements in both technical and employability skills for most occupations require youth to stay learning longer prior to moving to full-time work;