An Uncertain Future for the Future of Québec : Policy Brief on the Under Employment of English-speaking Youth in the Quebec Civil Service

Since the start of the COVID-19 global pandemic, post-secondary students have been amongst the hardest hit economically. In the span of two months, the unemployment rate amongst Canadian post-secondary students almost doubled, and less than a quarter of previously employed students continued working their regular hours. The global pandemic further exacerbated pre-existing issues of economic vulnerability and underemployment amongst English-speaking youth in Quebec. According to a 2018 CHSSN report, the unemployment rate amongst English-speaking youth was 13.3%, whereas that of their Frenchspeaking counterparts was 9.8%.2 Across different industries, the under-employment of Englishspeaking youth is perhaps the most pitiful within the Quebec civil service. In general, anglophones have represented between 0.7% and 1% of the provincial civil service for nearly half a century, despite representing 7.4% of the population in 2016