Being in your twenties is both exhilarating and stressful. We loop your studies, you start your career, you look for a roof and you think in the future… But it is not obvious when the cost of living explodes, the price of houses flies away and the climate is disrupted, as it is now. Was it easier being the same age in the early years 1980? Perspectives of young people of today and those of yesterday about the torments of early adulthood, when gloom economic hits. Fourth text in a series of five.
Quebec was in the midst of an economic crisis in 1982. And there was no question of a labor shortage like today. “There was a shortage of jobs, and a lot of people didn’t work in their field,” says Ann-Marie Gagné, who was studying public relations and was 24 at the time.
“In the beginning, because we were going to university — and there were fewer people going to university at that time — we felt like 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? »
And when the young people of the time managed to find a job, that did not mean that they found a good job, underlines Ann-Marie, who adds to have accumulated “very precarious” livelihoods. “I’ve always had contract jobs. I never knew if my posts were going to be deleted, ”she says.
It couldn’t have been easier for Denys Lamontagne. “I finished university at the same time as 240 guys and girls in my field. I don’t know if there are only 10 who have managed to place their feet there, ”he says of his studies in physical education at the age of 20.
“It had become obvious, from our second year, that no position was going to open up for anyone in our promotion and that we were being trained for nothing. I finished my bac only to please my parents. »
Denys Lamontagne came to the point of having a job interview with the federal government for a position at a weather station “somewhere like Ellesmere Island”. “It was the kind of interview you have to pass to become a cosmonaut. There were questions like, what do you do if you get stuck there with six guys and you become their whipping boy? I didn’t get the job. »
Instead, he launched his first bicycle touring business with friends, which they had to sell, then another, of which he is still the general manager today and which offers online training.
The end of an era
The young people of the 1980s arrived on the labor market after the period of the heyday of “salaried work”, which stretched from the end of the Second World War until the mid-1970s, notes Jacques Hamel, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Montreal.
“It was the time when young people could find a full-time job, work from Monday to Friday in the same company all their lives, even be rewarded for their loyalty… All that has crumbled over time explains Mr. Hamel. “Young people in the 1980s had to deal with the precariousness and flexibility of employment. They are also young people who have turned to self-employment,” he points out.
The job market could not be more different today from what it was in the early 1980s. Then in the grip of one of its worst economic crises, Quebec posted, in November 1982, a rate of 15% unemployment, compared to just 4% last month. But the gap between the two eras is even greater among young people, 7% of 15-24 year olds being unemployed today, whereas it was almost a quarter (23%) 40 years ago. Even with a recession looming next year, no expert expects unemployment of such magnitude to return.
This is not the only difference between the two eras, explains Pierre Fortin. We must also speak of the “stratospheric rise” of the presence of women in the labor market, says the economist emeritus of the University of Quebec in Montreal. Propelled by the democratization of education during the Quiet Revolution, then accelerated by the establishment of the public network of daycare services and other family policies in the second half of the 1990s, the rate of participation of women in the labor market In the prime working age group of 25 to 54 years, work has thus jumped, rising from just 57% in November 1982 to 89% last month, to almost reach equality with that of men (92%).
“A woman’s career today is no longer made up of a series of unrelated jobs that come with delays in tenure, promotions and salaries. . It’s a real career that is part of continuity,” says the expert.
Changing conditions and values
As for working conditions, “the tide has turned” for young people today, observes Jacques Hamel. “With the aging of the population and the labor shortage, young people have free rein to be much more demanding of their employers. »
But the value that young people associate with work has also changed. In particular, the pandemic has pushed them to ask themselves what they want to do with their lives, observes María Eugenia Longo, professor at the National Institute for Scientific Research and director of the Youth and Society Observatory.
“Young people have begun to reassess the place of work and studies. Their relationship to this is not the same as their elders. And young people are questioning the injunction to work”, she underlines.
Gabrielle Longin, 25, and Henri Villandre, 27, know they are lucky to have both landed good jobs in the federal public service. The international development graduate and economist specializing in green energy financing recently moved from Ottawa to Montreal, but dream of something else that might lead them to settle further east, where there’s the sea. “It’s always broken my heart not to live near water,” says Gabrielle.
The couple cherishes a carbon-neutral maritime farm project, but hesitates in the face of the darkening economic context. “We are young and only at the start of our career. We would like to dive into something that moves a little more, says Henri. But, as public servants, we are lucky to have great job security, and these are confusing and uncertain times that are a bit scary. »
To be continued, in the fifth and final part of our series: What kind of future?