People walk past the University of Toronto campus during the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto on June 10, 2020.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
We’ve heard a lot over the past year about the she-cession – the pronounced inequities in the COVID-19 economic downturn that have disproportionately hurt women. Now, let me introduce you to a silver lining that has emerged from that gender-skewed cloud: she-ducation.
A report published by Statistics Canada this week found that enrolment in postsecondary education among 15- to 29-year-old women rose to 32 per cent at the start of the fall academic term, up from 29 per cent a year earlier. Enrolment among young men, by contrast, showed no such gains, holding steady at 23 per cent.
The pandemic served to amplify the pre-existing trend of young women outnumbering their male counterparts in Canada’s universities and colleges. The decidedly difficult employment environment for young workers during the pandemic seems to have reinforced the greater attractiveness of school as an economic option for Canada’s young women.
Ultimately, that should prove to be very good news for the country’s next generation of women, in a fast-evolving economy that will increasingly value advanced skills. While the pandemic was certainly a setback for many female workers, it may have accelerated an education trend that could serve to narrow employment and wage gaps for the next generation.
On the other side of that gender divide, the data also point to the deepening of a troubling trend for young Canadian men. The pandemic has left a growing number of young men in a precarious labour-market limbo known as “NEET” – not in employment, education or training.
The study found that share of 15- to 29-year-old men categorized as NEET jumped four percentage points in the pandemic, to 14 per cent, while the proportion of NEET women in the same age group rose just one percentage point, to 12 per cent.
The big difference, report author Katherine Wall said, lies in that education decision. It has created a situation where more young men may ultimately be left behind by the fallout from the pandemic.
“The divergent gendered patterns may have long‑term implications on patterns for future economic well-being,” Ms. Wall wrote in the report. “Given young women’s higher likelihood of enrolment in postsecondary school at the beginning of the 2020/2021 school year ... it may be possible that they will see better future labour market outcomes compared to their male counterparts.”
Meanwhile, the rise in young male NEET numbers exposes those individuals to some serious potential pitfalls. Despite the acronym, NEET is a pretty messy place for young workers to find themselves.
“Previous research has shown that youth not in employment, education or training ... are considered at risk of long‑term economic and social difficulties,” the report said. “This risk grows if the situation persists, as NEET youth become more discouraged, disengaged and socially excluded.”
These developments need to be viewed through a longer lens than just the pandemic. This is yet another instance of this crisis exposing and exacerbating issues that were already out there before COVID-19 arrived.
Canadian women in postsecondary schools have outnumbered men for decades; the percentage of working-age women with a university degree surpassed that of men about 15 years ago, and the gap has widened since. Over the same period, the labour market’s share of jobs in traditionally male workplaces such as manufacturing – where the most valued skills were typically acquired outside of postsecondary institutions – have declined, particularly since the Great Recession of 2008-09, when many factories were forced to close their doors permanently. The era of young men walking out of high school and straight into a lucrative career at the local car plant or paper mill is long behind us.
Those shifts, both in education and skills in demand, have contributed to a narrowing of the gender gaps in labour-force participation and employment rates, and in incomes, over the past couple of decades – which is unquestionably a good thing. Those gaps are still considerable, but the strong trend for higher education among women, even in the midst of a pandemic, holds promise that further gains will be made.
On the other hand, the NEET numbers for young men pose a serious challenge. The pandemic has highlighted that there is a growing segment of the male labour force that is undertrained and underemployed, and in danger of becoming chronically so.
The postpandemic era will require a lot of reskilling of workers for a labour market that is poised to look very different over the next several years than it did before this crisis, which has accelerated technological and workplace change at a pace rarely seen. Young women, already embracing education as their best economic option, were forced by the unequal nature of the pandemic to raise their bet. Young men need to follow their lead, or growing numbers of them risk being left on the margins.
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