The Youth Employment and Skills Strategy (YESS) is a Government of Canada initiative led by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and delivered in partnership with 11 federal departments, agencies and Crown corporations. Together, these 12 partners deliver funding programs to help youth in Canada aged 15 to 30 develop skills and gain experience in order to successfully transition into the labour market of today and the future.
The YESS Program also works to increase capacity across the youth service provider network (including employers, service delivery organizations and educational institutions) to help employers hire and retain youth, in particular those who face barriers to employment. At ESDC, the YESS consists of two programs:
- The Youth Employment and Skills Strategy Program provides funding to organizations to deliver a range of activities that help youth overcome barriers to employment. The YESS Program supports a flexible approach that offers tailored services, to ensure individuals across the country can gain the skills and experience they need to find and keep good-quality jobs. Supports can include mentorship, coaching, training, wraparound services (for example, dependent care support, mental health counselling) and paid work placements.
- Canada Summer Jobs provides wage subsidies to employers from not-for-profit organizations, the public sector and private sector organizations with 50 or fewer full-time employees, to create quality summer employment opportunities for young Canadians.
Youth who face barriers often include:
- Indigenous youth;
- Black and other racialized youth;
- 2SLGBTQI+ youth;
- youth with disabilities;
- youth who are early leavers from high school;
- youth living in low-income households;
- youth experiencing houselessness or precarious housing; and
- youth living in rural, remote, northern or fly-in communities
For these youth, barriers often intersect, making them more likely to be among those involuntarily not in employment, education, or training.
YESS call for proposals
On October 4, 2023, ESDC launched a call for proposals (CFP) for the YESS Program. This CFP aimed to fund new projects that support youth facing barriers to employment. For the first time, it included a Youth with Disabilities stream to increase the availability of inclusive programming to support youth with disabilities and address the unique employment challenges faced by these individuals. Over 30% of projects selected for funding are expected to address the unique employment challenges faced by youth with disabilities, surpassing the original target of 20% under the new Youth with Disabilities Stream.
Also new is a requirement that all projects serve youth furthest from employment in some capacity, including youth not in employment, education or training, and youth facing multiple and compounding barriers to employment. Other priority groups include Indigenous youth, 2SLGBTQI+ youth, Black and other racialized youth, and youth in official language minority communities.
ESDC is proud that through this CFP, the government will be supporting more than 200 new projects over the next four years that will help improve labour market outcomes for more than 22,000 youth facing barriers to employment.
