Newcomer youth hiring fair aims to confront economic uncertainty and opportunity in Calgary

Newcomers to Calgary often face language or cultural barriers when finding a job but a new hiring fair is aiming to ease some of those challenges.

Newcomers to Calgary often face language or cultural barriers when finding a job, but a new hiring fair aims to kickstart opportunities as competition increases and Canada-U.S. trade tensions create further uncertainty.

The Calgary Catholic Immigration Society (CCIS) held its inaugural Youth Employment Summit on Tuesday at Platform Calgary in an effort to connect more than 250 young newcomers with opportunities from over 30 local employers.

Four separate breakout sessions also offered youth the opportunity to learn how to market their skills, navigate the job search process and prepare for interviews.

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“These people are new to the country, and they just don’t know where to start, so our role is extremely important to ease this transition,” said Hasmik Asmaryan, business, employment and training with CCIS.

“This cannot be timelier, and it’s even needless to talk about the importance of considering the extremely high rate of unemployment, especially for youth and especially for newcomers.”

Alberta’s overall unemployment rate currently sits at 7.1 per cent in March 2025, which is a 0.6 per cent increase from the same time period last year, according to statistics from the provincial government.

Youth unemployment in Alberta (15 to 24 years old) has also jumped a full percentage point over the last year to 15.1 per cent, which is higher than the national average of 13.7 per cent.

CCIS historic data has found that newcomers are faced with even higher unemployment numbers in Alberta that range around the 23 per cent mark.

Despite the weakening labour force and economic uncertainty, job seekers like 21-year-old Samuel Aguiar Almera are staying optimistic.

He moved to Calgary from Venezuela three months ago.

“I’ve found that many of the jobs I am seeking are not posted online or even posted at all, but there’s still positions available and events like this help me to find true connections,” he said.

“This is a great opportunity to network because the more people you meet, the more opportunity you can find out there to evolve and grow in your career.”

Others like 20-year-old Adila Nazari moved to Calgary almost a year ago from India. She speaks three different languages and hopes to use that to her advantage.

Highest youth jobless rate to start the year in two decades

The average unemployment rate for recent post-secondary graduates under the age of 25 in Canada who aren’t currently enrolled in school has now hit 11.2 per cent, according to recent data from Statistics Canada.

Brendon Bernard, senior economist for Indeed Canada, notes that for this group, unemployment numbers are the highest they have been in at least two decades.

“Youth unemployment numbers are always linked to what’s going on in the broader labour market, but over the past two years or so, they’ve kind of deteriorated faster than conditions elsewhere in the job market,” he said.

“We’ve got this looming economic situation facing us, and we really don’t know what direction it’s going to go.”

Bernard added that the appetite for employers to hire right now appears to be more cautious amidst trade tensions, which have led to less opportunity in some instances.

“We’ve actually seen a few signs, for instance, in manufacturing job postings, where the trends are a bit weaker than the headline average, a sign of that creeping pessimism,” he said.

“For young Canadians, the sort of weaker labour market that’s developed, this is all happening pre-trade war, but now we have this added factor where, while there were some reasons to be cautiously optimistic for the Canadian economy just a few months ago, now we’ve got this looming uncertainty where that turnaround that we were hoping to see is now going to be tougher to come by.”

Alberta’s increasing migration is also adding to the competitiveness for jobs.

Mark Parsons, ATB Financial chief economist, says the province’s rapid influx of people has been highly concentrated amongst the youth population aged 15 to 24 years old.

“Alberta has to be able to accommodate all these young people with jobs, and that’s tough to do,” Parsons said.

“In fact, employment growth has been pretty good among the youth population, but population and labour force growth has been even stronger, and that’s putting upward pressure on unemployment.”

Parsons also pointed to challenges Alberta has been seeing in its labour markets with job vacancies, but not necessarily the right people to fill those jobs.

“Skills mismatches is a very important issue that we need to pay close attention to,” he said.

“For youth, that means finding those opportunities, whether that be in the trades or where we see shortages for youth to participate in the labour market, so they have the skills to take advantage of the opportunities.”