Executive Summary
		English-speaking youth in Québec face complex employment challenges shaped by their dual position as a local language minority and members of a globally privileged language group. While their experiences reflect broader youth labour market struggles, they also echo patterns seen among historically marginalized communities navigating work and social integration. Their perspectives offer valuable insight into how language, identity, and geography intersect to shape labour market experiences. This report presents findings from a joint research project in collaboration with Youth 4 Youth Québec (Y4Y). It explores the employment status, experiences, and needs of English-speaking youth aged 15-34 in Québec, focusing on the factors shaping their employment journeys and outlooks. The study combines a review of existing data and research with original findings from consultations with 70 youth across the province, a survey of 239 youth, and an analysis of Census 2021 data. Through this mixed-methods approach, the report centres on youth perspectives to inform more responsive policies and programs.

Key findings

• High economic and linguistic uncertainty: English-speaking (ES) youth are navigating a high degree of linguistically related economic uncertainty alongside complex education and mobility choices.
• Gaps in French training: Gaps in French-language training, both in school and in the workplace, are negatively impacting youth employability and their French-language confidence. 
• Persistent employment gaps: ES youth have lower overall employment outcomes compared to French-speaking (FS) youth, and data across age cohorts indicate that these gaps persist even as they age and gain experience.
• Information deficits: ES youth have lower access to necessary labour market information and career guidance for jobs in Québec compared to FS youth.
• Mental health, discrimination, and career outlook impacts: Compounding labour market challenges, including perceived discrimination and intersectional barriers, are strongly related to ES youth’s mental health and overall career outlook.
• Shift toward self-directed opportunities: Youth are highly resilient and are turning to practical, self-directed learning opportunities such as apps to improve their employability and French skills, while explicitly asking for more employment-linked programs, supports and skill-building.

Recommendations

• Update career guidance: Support youth in their post-secondary education choices through a holistic career guidance approach that helps them navigate residency, career mobility, and French-language training. Update job-search guidance to include digital skills and strategies tailored for English-speaking youth, teaching them how to confidently navigate Québec’s labour market. 

• Invest in practical language training and confidence programs: Fund accessible initiatives, such as mentorships and employer-sponsored training, to help ES youth practically build their French skills on the job and throughout their post-secondary education.

• Prioritize specific youth retention policies: Develop targeted interventions to retain ES youth, including those born in Québec as well as immigrants. Fund English-language post-secondary education in the province and develop return incentives for students who leave Québec or their home regions for their studies but wish to come back and work.

• Provide accessible, English-language wraparound supports: Increase the cohesiveness and findability of wraparound employment and community programs, ensuring that critical mental health support and services for out-of-school (NEET), unemployed, or regional English-speaking youth are readily accessible in their primary language.

• Tailor policies for marginalized ES youth: Design specific programs, policies, and program funding streams to address the compounding intersectional barriers faced by English-speaking youth in the labour market. Policies such as expediting foreign credential recognition, strengthening worker protections, affirmative workplace cultures, and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) training can help address these challenges.

• Improve affirmative workplace cultures for youth and linguistic minorities: Sensitize employers to foster inclusive, intergenerational, and cross-cultural understanding in the workplace to protect and support a sense of belonging among English-speaking youth.

• Develop tailored Labour Market Information (LMI): Improve the availability and frequency of high-quality, up-to-date LMI tailored for ES youth and overlapping demographic groups, detailing job pathways and growing industries.

• Improve data collection on English-speaking youth: Improve the availability and frequency of high-quality labour force information for English-speaking youth.

• Invest in practical job-experience bridges: Create supported job-creation and work-experience programs, including part-time roles, that directly connect youth to relevant entry-level experience in growing industries. 

• Support employer transparency and worker rights: Enhance oversight of hiring practices and the digital job market to increase the transparency of French-language proficiency expectations. Increase public awareness of workplace rights and language laws to support young workers’ confidence when applying to jobs and their ability to self-advocate.

• Protect non-standard workers: Update labour laws and employment standards to expand the definitions of workers, offering better protections, wage security, and bargaining rights for youth in non-standard, part-time, or gig employment. Ensure English-speaking youth are considered in the development of employment standards.

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