Colleagues Clémence Pavic and Éric Desrosiers have co-authored a series of five texts offering a cross-section of young people who lived their twenties 40 years apart. A reading of 2022 and 1982 of a social and economic situation of similar appearance, characterized by uncertainty about their future and by an increased cost of living under the combined action of the inflationary outbreak and the muscular rise in interest rate. Underneath this similarity lies a great difference.
Denys Lamontagne, father of two daughters now in their thirties, offered this observation. “On the one hand, the two situations are not different: everyone is taken to manage. On the other hand, in our time, this anxiety was experienced as something individual, whereas today it seems to me to be experienced more as a social phenomenon. It’s everyone, for example, who is worried about the future of the planet. »
Concern of the hour, fueled by Russia’s war on Ukraine, inflation is on everyone’s lips. “It’s getting worse and worse. I’m getting tighter and tighter on my grocery budget, and the rents are super expensive. If I didn’t have the help of my parents, I don’t think I would be able to do it,” laments Odille Diotte, who has just turned 21.
The double-digit increase in store-bought food prices alone has outpaced the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for almost a year now, the year-over-year increase another now wanting to be the most intense since that of August 1981.
In fact, the 1980s followed a decade of high inflation and began another decade of high inflation, with central banks having little or no control over inflation. The adoption of targeting by the Bank of Canada in 1993 stabilized the CPI, and it is expected that today, the period of inflationary spikes may only be a matter of a few years .
From precariousness to scarcity
Quebec was in the midst of an economic crisis in 1982. And there was no question of a labor shortage like today, says Ann-Marie Gagné, who was 24 years old at the time. “There was a shortage of jobs, and a lot of people didn’t work in their field […] In the beginning, because we were going to university—and there were fewer people going to university at that time—we had the impression that it guaranteed us a future, a stable job, well paid, with benefits… But that was not the case. We wondered: what are we going to do with these diplomas? »
There was a shortage of jobs [en 1982]and many people have not worked in their field.
From precarious employment, we have moved on to labor shortages. While struggling with one of its worst post-war recessions, Quebec had an unemployment rate of 15% at the end of 1982, compared to only 4% today. Among young people, 7% of 15-24 year olds are unemployed today, compared to 23% 40 years ago. In a Radio-Canada news bulletin, analysts deplored the fact that with an unemployment rate approaching 20%, young people are the big losers in the fight against inflation, which is being played out in the midst of an economic recession. From one in sixteen unemployed young people in the mid-1960s, they fell to almost one in five in the early 1980s.
The wind has turned. With the aging of the population and the labor shortage, young people have free rein to be much more demanding of their employers.
The economist emeritus of the University of Quebec in Montreal Pierre Fortin recalled that after almost two decades of constant progress, the real increase in wages stopped, and even reversed, from the end of the 1970s. “The young people who arrived on the labor market in 1980, like those who arrived during the other big crisis, in 1990, were in the m… for several years before really being able to take a more reasonable cruising speed. »
“The tide has turned, chained Jacques Hamel, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of
Montreal. With the aging of the population and the labor shortage, young people have free rein to be much more demanding of their employers. »
Unaffordable housing
On the other hand, the question of affordability, not only of property, but more broadly of housing, has become a pressing issue. It is written that the last time the level of housing affordability was so low in Quebec was in the early 1980s, when monthly mortgage payments for an average Montreal home were equivalent to 40% of the median household income. , compared to 49% today. This price rises to 545,788 dollars, the equivalent of seven and a half times the annual income of households, compared to 147,331 dollars in 1982 (in constant dollars of 2022), or a little more than twice the median annual income of households.
Ageing population
María Eugenia Longo, co-holder of the Quebec Youth Research Network Chair, adds to the list that “in the early 1980s, young people represented more than a third of the population in Quebec. Today, they are less than a quarter. Not only do they take up less space in numbers, but they also have a greater intergenerational burden to bear. »
By contrast, this aging population is now retiring with a household net worth — where the primary earner is 55 or older — of more than $1 million, according to a reading from Statistics Canada. made in the third quarter of 2020. The majority of non-retired Canadians (58%) expect to finance their old age mainly through their private retirement savings, adds the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. Retraite Québec measures that the percentage of Quebecers aged 60 and over who receive income from a supplemental plan or an RRSP reached 60% in 2018, compared to 35% in 1982.
What will the 20-something say to his peer in 2060? Odile Diotte says she is optimistic about all the challenges that await her generation. “There are still great things happening in Quebec. ” An example ? After a pause, she replies: “It snowed yesterday and it’s white everywhere. It’s nice. »