The landscape of the summer job market locally has changed significantly over the last couple of years for both high school and university students looking for work and the employers who are, in turn, looking for the services of those students.
It’s not that students can’t find jobs – there are still more than enough out there. But how they go about finding those jobs has changed significantly due to government cuts to job programming.
People in their late 20s and early 30s might remember the Hire-A-Student offices that used to dot Canadian communities, job centres where students could find full-time, part-time or even casual work and get help with resumes and cover letters. St. Albert hasn’t had a Hire-A-Student office for about eight years, but local students had access to offices in Edmonton.
But those offices are no more, axed in 2010 due to budget constraints. The city’s schools don’t offer any kind of official job help, according to the districts, instead casually passing on tips or information that are shared with them. The Youth Community Centre, once the home of the city’s Hire-A-Student office and its own employment centre, no longer offers any kind of formal service.
“A lot of it is through word of mouth and through friends,” said Paula Power, spokesperson for St. Albert Public Schools.
The only real place left in town a person can physically go to find work or help with resumes and such is the Alberta Works office at the Provincial Building downtown. While designed mostly to help anyone find a job, spokesperson Jennifer Dagsvik says they are there to also help students.
“Our focus is to try and connect Albertans to work and for employers to look at Albertans as an excellent alternative to going elsewhere,” Dagsvik said.
The office has career employment counsellors that help clients with their job searches and access to online jobs databases, many of which are suitable for students.
“We’ve always had this resource for students but it was never pumped too much because there were other programs,” Dagsvik said.
But resources aren’t just scarce for students, they have also grown scarce for many non-profit groups that used to offer students jobs. In its 2013 budget, the Alberta government eliminated its long-offered STEP program. STEP offered wage subsidies to non-profits if they wanted to hire summer help and many groups, especially local, took advantage of the program.
The Community Information & Volunteer Centre hired a student using STEP every summer for more than 20 years, director Glynis Thomas said.
“Every year we apply for one student and that student is responsible to work in our volunteer centre program and our community information volunteer referral,” said Thomas. “We are challenged to be able to keep up to date on our agency information and contacts and it’s very important that we do that.”
The cut came with no warning, Thomas said, and now many non-profits won’t be able to hire students because they simply don’t have the extra money in their own budgets.
“So with no warning you suddenly have this hole,” Thomas said. “So what is it we can do to be able to ensure we can now deliver this service without the support of the student? Where do we take it from? That’s kind of the dilemma we have right now.”
Even the city is affected by the elimination of the STEP grant, says Chris Jardine, general manager of community and protective services. It received $24,000 in STEP funds annually to hire students for recreation and cultural programming. Because of the short notice, the city will now have to cover that cost itself and re-evaluate what it wants to do for next year.
“At the end of the day it won’t have an impact on programs, but it is a financial revenue hit to us,” said Jardine.
