Students finding it harder to land summer jobs

With summer holidays already nearing an end and many students still without jobs, it’s looking like a pretty dismal year for student summer employment.
This year, Northern Community Development Services (NCDS) has seen 221 people sign up for their Summer Jobs Service in hopes of getting a good job, either to help pay for mounting tuition fees or just to get a few extra dollars in their pockets before returning to high school.

But Luke Leimenstoll, the Summer Job Services employment officer, only has been able to find 84 of those applicants a job to date.
Although he estimates about 70 percent of the other students will have found jobs one way or another, there’s 30 percent who didn’t.
Leimenstoll said summer jobs are getting hard to find in this area mainly because of the slim pickings.
Most of the job findings are attributed to retail and fast food, but many of those positions do not pay the ever-soaring tuition bills many students are faced with.
Leimenstoll agreed college and university students have it a bit easier than high school students when it comes to landing summer jobs because positions that open in May, like flagger jobs, town jobs, Customs positions, and mill jobs, are all well-suited to their arrival back home.
But since high school runs until late June, younger students find it harder to score a decent job, whether they are heading off to their first year of university or returning to Fort High in the fall.
Still, even college and university students can have a hard time finding a job each summer.
Kirsten Boyer, a third-year university student studying concurrent education, returned home to Fort Frances this summer and immediately went in to NCDS. She was looking for any position that allowed her to work outside in maintenance or physical labour positions.
While she now works with Community Living as the student summer activity planner, and is very happy with her position, Boyer was disappointed it took a full month to land the job she didn’t even expect to get in the first place.
Despite her early start and hard work, she still was unemployed for a full month. And for a young woman who needs to pay her way through university, Boyer insisted “every penny that you can earn is necessary.”
While she has never worked during the school year because she doesn’t want to detract from her studies, Boyer admitted she’ll most likely have to pick up a part-time position this time around to make ends meet.
Boyer attributed much of her struggle with finding a summer job to “the loop.”
“I find a lot of times to get the jobs you already have to have an ‘in’ somewhere,” she remarked. “You have to have had the job in high school or know the people working there.
“And once you get out of the loop, it is really hard to get back into it.”
Christopher Allan, who is entering Grade 11 in Fort Frances High School this fall, also has been a victim of not being in “the loop.”
Allan really enjoys computers and computer programming, and dreams of one day attending the University of Waterloo to work towards a degree in that field.
This summer, he decided he should get his feet wet by getting a job in the field. At the very least, he wanted to find any job that just would keep him busy and fill his time.
He also registered with NCDS in hopes of finding a job that would suit him. Unfortunately, even this late in the summer, he still has not found a job.
Allan noted this would have been his first job, and he was excited to work, but it just didn’t pan out for him. “It’s just that a lot of people are looking for a job and there just aren’t enough jobs open,” he stressed.
He recalled there was one position he was really interested in getting since it was in his field, but a university student landed it instead.
“It’s hard because it’s just too much free time and not enough money,” he said.
Allan added summer jobs don’t just give skills, they also keep kids busy and out of trouble. And not having enough available positions is really hard on students, especially those still in high school.
While many are disappointed over not finding a job in their field, let alone finding one period, Leimenstoll conceded the sad truth is just that this area is suffering when it comes to offering jobs for students.
Even the local paper mill, once an industry many students aimed at getting into, did not hire on any summer students this year, according to Leimenstoll.
This leads to many students not returning home for their summers; instead staying in the city where they are attending college or university and entering the job market there.
For those who do return, Leimenstoll acknowledged “students are just getting what they can more or less.”
“They attempt to get jobs in their field at the beginning, but they realize that it’s very rare for them to get that so they settle for what they can get halfway through the summer,” he explained.
But for students like Kirsten Boyer, where time is just as precious as money earned, sometimes that waiting game really puts a strain on things.