SELF-EMPL YMENT
DON PITTIS
the cash-starved Canadian Dream RELATED STORIES i) Can't find a job? Then make one, youth told ii) Self-employed slow to take up employment insurance iii) Generation Screwed: Youth struggle for jobs, home ownership
"What I find most interesting is the number of students who are not looking for a job at graduation." That slightly outrageous comment from the outspoken Sean Wise, professor of Entrepreneurship at Ryerson University, came before we got the latest jobs numbers from Statistics Canada, which showed the economy shed 46,000 jobs in December. As has been the case for a while now, the number of unemployed — especially those in the 15 to 24 age bracket remained stubbornly high. Wise wasn't saying kids nowadays are lazy. Instead, he's suggesting they want to work for themselves, not for somebody else. They want to be self-employed.
DO IT YOURSELF "Amongst Millennials there seems to have been this paradigm shift where less students are looking for the credentials leading to a full time job and more students are looking for the knowledge, skills and experience they need to start their own businesses," says Wise. The concept is appealing. It turns responsibility on its head. Instead of the economy having to create jobs for young people, young people use their sparkle and drive to create jobs for the economy.
It is the New Canadian Dream. Rather than walking into the jungle at 17 and finding a diamond mine like Uncle Ben in Death of a Salesman, today's 17-year-old Canadian walks into Waterloo and invents a million-dollar app. The model certainly fits with the modern business-driven ethic celebrated by right-of-centre governments and the business press. But you don't have to be right-of-centre to benefit if Wise's "paradigm shift" is a success. Self-employment makes up about 16 per cent of all jobs in Canada. And people whose self-employment ventures grow eventually become employers themselves, employers who provide half of all Canadian jobs.
HARSH REALITY Every business journalist has done at least one enthusiastic story about youthful start-ups and successful entrepreneurs. The CBC show Venture used to specialize in the genre. And while there are many anecdotal success stories, the reality is harsher. Herbert Schuetze is an economist at the University of Victoria who studies self-employment, and while he too celebrates its successes, he knows there is a downside.
"A lot of self-employment that we see going on in Canada is sort of employment of last resort," says Schuetze, "I can't find a job and so I strap a lawn mower to my pickup truck and now I'm doing lawn services."
Let's help people who want to be self-employed and are willing to take that route YES president Nancy Schaefer
