A recent study has ranked Victoria as Canada’s fourth-best city for launching youth careers and enabling youth to find work when compared to 27 other urban areas across the country.
The 2021 Urban Work Index, presented by Youthful Cities and RBC Future Launch, showed Victoria performing positively for young professionals, compared to urban centres across Canada, trailing only behind Vancouver, Hamilton and Edmonton.
The survey looked at a multitude of factors including City Economy, Climate Change, Cost of Living, Digital Access, Education & Training, Entrepreneurial Spirit, Equity & Inclusion, Good Youth Jobs, Income Generation, Public Health, and Public Transportation.
The 2021 survey, according to Youthful Cities, aimed to capture how a city’s attributes help young people fulfill their professional and personal ambitions.
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As far as Victoria goes, the capital city scored high on Good Youth Jobs (2) and City Economy (1), and Public Health (5) while placing near the bottom of the list for factors like Cost of Living (20), Educational Training (21), and Entrepreneurial Spirit (24).
“Victoria ranks first in City Economy and second for Good Youth Jobs thanks to the support in place to connect youth to work and the second-highest provincial minimum in the country,” reads the survey.
“While it is easier for young people to find work, Victoria places 24th in Entrepreneurial Spirit which could be improved by creating more spaces and funding for young entrepreneurs.”
Courtesy of Youthful Cities
The primary source of data for the Index is the Youthful Cities Pivot Hub — a free, open-source data portal that compiles information from available public sources, surveys, and interviews to inform the measurement of topics and indicators.
The study, launched in March 2020, hired 1,200 young people in the analyzed Canadian cities as urban researchers to collect a large portion of the public data, while conducting surveys and interviews with over 3,000 youth between the ages of 15 and 29.
“COVID-19 has made the future of work as a young adult seem even more precarious than usual,” said Robert Barnard, Co-Founder of Youthful Cities. “As governments and corporations are getting ready for post-COVID recovery, there is a great opportunity to create a blueprint for more inclusive and accessible work in our great Canadian cities. We hope the 2021 Urban Work Index will inform and inspire that dialogue to start now.”
The other British Columbian urban hub analyzed, outside of Vancouver (1) and Victoria (4), was Kelowna, which came in at 12 on the list.
For the purposes of this survey, the data for Victoria was comprised of six municipalities: Victoria, Colwood, Esquimalt, Langford, Oak Bay and Saanich.
Canada’s best urban areas for youth in 2021 (total score)
- Vancouver (623.66)
- Hamilton (541.23)
- Edmonton (538.96)
- Victoria (538.38)
- Montreal (532.22)
- Calgary (530.47)
- Ottawa/Gatineau (530.40)
- Toronto (525.91)
- Quebec City (503.92)
- Mississauga (501.05)
- Halifax (496.42)
- Kelowna (494.48)
- Winnipeg (486.21)
- Kitchener-Waterloo (485.481)
- Sudbury (481.03)
- Saskatoon (479.36)
- Lethbridge (474.13)
- Brampton (468.84)
- Laval (466.55)
- Yellowknife (461.87)
- Oshawa (460.16)
- Regina (458.57)
- Charlottetown (446.22)
- St. John’s (434.91)
- London (434.16)
- Moncton (411.74)
- Fredericton (395.27)
Graham Cox
