Canada’s summer job market has collapsed like a poorly pitched tent, and Gen Z is now left with nothing but unpaid internships, depression, and heatstroke. According to recent data, youth employment has dropped faster than your Wi-Fi signal at a cottage, with thousands of students forced to choose between “volunteering for experience” and “selling feet pics for rent.”
Restaurants and retailers, once reliable havens of minimum wage and managerial disdain, are slashing hours and hiring their nephews instead. Meanwhile, career advice from boomers remains unchanged: “Just walk in with a résumé and a firm handshake!”
For many, this summer is now a bleak mix of ghosted job applications and awkward family dinners where you explain for the sixth time that “content creation” is a real job.
As one 19-year-old philosophy major put it: “I didn’t expect my summer break to break me, but here we are.”
