Across Canada, an increasing number of young men are quietly exiting the systems designed to prepare them for professional life.
They are not employed, not enrolled in school, and not participating in training programs. Referred to as “NEETs” — not in employment, education or training — these individuals represent a trend that has some economists worried.
In the two most recent academic years, the national NEET rate among men aged 20 to 29 increased from 13.8 per cent to 15.1 per cent, a recent Statistics Canada release says.
“ It’s just a number, but what it represents is people being disengaged early in their career, early in their life,” said Linda Nazareth, an economist and senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute think tank.
The recent data confirm longer term trends. Excluding the pandemic years, young Canadian men, particularly those aged 20 to 24, have seen higher NEET rates than young women during the past decade.
Nazareth says the phenomenon could have broader social implications than the direct economic consequences felt by NEETs themselves.
“ It leads to social unrest and political outcomes you don’t want,” she said.
Discouraged workers
The NEET rate includes both people who are actively looking for work as well as those who have stopped looking. The standard unemployment rate only considers individuals actively looking for work.
Christopher Worswick, a professor of economics at Carleton University, says a sense of hopelessness can lead people to give up on looking for work.
“Sometimes economists talk about a ‘discouraged worker’ effect, which is where someone’s been unemployed for a while, they’ve done a lot of interviews … they’re suitable, and they become discouraged, and they give up,” he said.
These individuals cease to be counted in the unemployment rate, but do decrease the labour force participation rate — the percentage of adults employed or actively seeking employment.
Canada’s current labour force participation rate is 65.3, with men (69.6) participating at a higher rate than women (61.0).
The NEET rate for young women did not see a statistically significant uptick in the two most recent academic years. But the rate is comparable to last year’s NEET rate for young men, at 15.2 per cent. For this demographic, a 1.9 per cent drop in employment was offset by an increase in post-secondary enrollment.
Asked to explain why many women are staying in school while men are checking out of both education and employment, Nazareth said, “I’ve seen every kind of theory on this.” She cited the influence of video games as one such theory.
“Clearly, there’s an achievement gap there.”
Soft skills
Karen Myers, the founder and CEO of Blueprint, a non-profit focused on improving social and economic outcomes for youth, says Canada lacks a coherent national strategy for engaging NEET youth.
She describes the current support system as fragmented and insufficient. “There’s just a patchwork of programs that exist right now provided by non-profit organizations,” she said. “People don’t know how to find [career and life-management] programs.”
“So we have got to create a more coherent roadmap.”
The Canada Summer Jobs Program — which provides wage subsidies to support employers who create summer work experiences for those aged 15 to 30 years — is a step in the right direction, she says.
Young men and women looking to enter the labour market would also benefit from learning soft social skills, she says.
“There’s a set of transferable skills like problem solving, adaptability, communication, collaboration … Those are all really, really important and things you want to be able to communicate clearly to an employer.”
Milan Bernard, a co-spokesperson for the National Council of Unemployed Workers advocacy group, says some young people need help organizing their job applications. Others would benefit from social programs to assist disengaged youth.
“ Sometimes [NEETs] have had some experiences of health [issues] or criminality, and need support from social workers to make sure that they’re able to be reinserted into society,” he said.
Policy levers
Worswick says Ottawa’s immigration policy has had an effect on Canada’s labour market — and that the people who move to Canada compete with Canadians for jobs.
“I support immigration, permanent immigration,” Worswick said. “But I don’t think we should typically have temporary foreign workers, especially less-skilled ones.”
Worswick also points to the number of foreign students as a potential influence on Canadian engagement in the workforce.
“I think we can have international post-secondary students. I think there’s a lot of benefits from it. But we have to be really strict on how much they can work off campus,” said Worswick.
“That was a mistake that the previous government made.”
Statistics Canada’s May 2025 release points to the influence of immigration on youth unemployment. “Beginning in 2023, slowing growth in labour demand and rapid population growth contributed to declining employment rates, and unemployment started to trend up, particularly for youth,” the release says. ‘
Myers, of Blueprint, says these trends have affected young men’s well-being. “ We know that young men are feeling despair, feeling passed over, feeling that school and other services aren’t relevant to them,” she said.
“They’re not feeling heard, they’re not feeling seen. They’re feeling like things are unaffordable, and there just isn’t a path forward.”
Nazareth warns that a societal failure to tackle these problems could have broader social ramifications, such as lower GDP and higher crime rates.
“ It doesn’t really bode well for them, but it also doesn’t really bode well for anybody in society,” she said.
I know where they’re spending a lot of that idle time, on the Internet! Sometimes it’s the poor spelling, sometimes it’s the misogyny that gives them away, but they seem to be looking for opportunities to troll and insult, no matter the subject.
Young white ( yes I said that racist word) cannot find jobs while in high school and university. The government is subsidizing immigrants and Visa holders got jobs so white males are not included in the market. What sane country doesn’t support its youth?
We so need medical staff. Is there no way to direct these young people to these vocations?
1. Tell young males that the greatest rewards from society will for their successful participation is sports, most especially those where violence and injury are most likely.
2. For those who for whatever reason are sport ineligible, present them with addictive video pastimes: TV shows focused on crime, video games focused on violence.
We have surrendered the direction of our culture to an entertainment industry which has well researched the profitability of providing these addictive distractions. The skills gathered in childhood through camping, exploring, hunting & fishing, music lessons, book reading, Scouts, science experiments, church groups, neighborhood kids games, have been usurped for the profits of the sport organizers and video addictors. Culturally we have devalued the role of raising our children, and allowed a narrowly focused industry to take it on. The effect, the creation of NEEPs appears similar in the US and Canada. Is it a North American phenomenon?
Young men need to learn a second language and leave. Gen X fathers will help them as they too see what is going on worse than 1990s, that lost decade fuelled by Liberals as well.