Steven Wang is CEO of Venture for Canada and lecturer at Harvard University and the University of Toronto.
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As Canada enters graduation season, approximately 650,000 post-secondary students are preparing to enter the workforce. They will arrive at a time when youth unemployment already sits at 13.8 percent, more than double the national average. The question is obvious: what’s going on?
A lot of the conversation right now is trying to pin this on AI—entry-level jobs are disappearing, and this technology is to blame. AI is part of the story, but it’s not the main reason young people are struggling to find work.
The more immediate issue is structural: Canada has built an economy in which too few employers are willing or able to give young people their first real shot.
Used well, AI can make it easier for employers to take a chance on someone earlier in their career. Used poorly, it will become one more reason to avoid training anyone at all.
For many businesses, hiring a new graduate is not just a bet on potential, it is a very real investment of time, training, and supervision, with no guarantee that the investment will pay off. Increasingly, that is a cost many are choosing to avoid.
Across the country, graduates are being told they need experience to get hired, while employers say they cannot afford to create it. Job postings labelled “entry level” ask for two or three years of experience. Businesses say they want talent, but not the cost or risk of building it. So responsibility gets passed around until no one takes it on.
This is the “experience gap”—a growing breakdown in how our labour market creates pathways into meaningful work.
As CEO of Venture for Canada, a national non-profit that connects young people with paid work experience and training opportunities, I see this every day. Graduates who did what they were told—earned the degree, built the résumé—still cannot get in the door. Employers say they need people who can contribute immediately, but too often stop short of creating the conditions that would allow early-career workers to become capable of doing exactly that.
That is why it’s a mistake to frame this mainly as an AI problem. AI is changing work, and some employers are already reassessing entry-level hiring. But in Canada, adoption remains limited. Recent Statistics Canada data show that only 12.2 percent of Canadian firms used AI to produce goods or deliver services in 2025. An additional 14.5 percent of businesses reported plans to adopt AI over the next 12 months, while the majority reported no plans at all. We are debating a future disruption while failing to fix the problem in front of us.
The real risk is not just that AI will replace some junior-level tasks. It’s that AI could become yet another reason not to hire and train young workers at all. If young people do not get the chance to develop judgment, responsibility, and practical experience early, this problem will continue and compound. More young people get stuck trying to break in. Employers struggle to find talent. Productivity suffers.
We see what happens when young people are given real responsibility early. At Venture for Canada, whether through work-integrated learning, entrepreneurship training, or supporting young operators to grow existing businesses, real-world experience—not credentials alone—is what turns potential into productivity. A majority of our internship participants were offered future work with their employer, and 90 percent said that they gained experience that will help them in the workplace after they graduate. An overwhelming majority of training participants indicated that the program supported their development of in-demand skills such as teamwork, communication, problem-solving, and resiliency.
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If governments want to encourage AI adoption through tax credits, grants, and productivity programs, those incentives should also reward employers for creating paid early-career opportunities. Technology policy and workforce policy can no longer be treated as separate. They are now inseparable.
The Ontario government’s latest budget includes billions in new funding for post-secondary education and expanded enrolment, reflecting a continued focus on producing more graduates with in-demand skills. But producing more graduates doesn’t solve the problem if there are still too few pathways into the workforce. Ottawa’s Spring Economic Update also announced $2 billion to support young Canadians with paid, job-ready placements that lead into skilled trades and apprenticeships. It’s a helpful start, but there are large segments of the youth population that this will not cover.
Public support should be tied not just to investing in AI and other workplace technology, but to how those tools are used—to hire, train, and develop new talent. Used well, AI can lower the cost of supervision and make it easier for employers to take a chance on someone earlier in their career. Used poorly, it will become one more reason to avoid training anyone at all.
Canada does not have an AI problem so much as it has a responsibility problem. We have allowed the burden of developing talent to fall through the cracks between educators, employers, and governments. The result is a generation of capable young people left permanently “almost qualified.”
The opinions and analysis expressed in the above article are those of its author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of BetaKit or its editorial staff. It has been edited for clarity, length, and style.
Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Annie Spratt.