Achi news desk-
Canadians are feeling down about their personal finances – and Generation Z is the gloomiest of all.
The Nanos Pocket Book Index, a measure of how people view their personal finances and job security, fell to 50 last week, matching its lowest level in April 2020. It is one component of the Nanos Canada Confidence Index Bloomberg wider, which also measures public expectations about the economy.
Young people are driving the pocketbook index lower. For respondents aged 18 to 29 – who are mainly members of Gen Z, along with the youngest millennials – the index fell to 40, the lowest recorded in its 16-year history.
The youth index has been in freefall since the last week of March, down 17 points in just five weeks. The recent sharp decline is worse than in April 2020, the depth of the pandemic recession, when Canada’s gross domestic product fell 10.7 percent.
Only 11 percent of respondents of all ages said their personal finances had improved over the past year, the lowest going back to the start of the Bloomberg Nanos survey in 2008, while 50 percent said their finances had gotten worse.
In a technical sense, Canada has so far avoided a recession. That is largely due to explosive population growth led by migration, which has kept the economic pie from shrinking. The slices have grown smaller, however. On a per capita basis, the economy has shrunk by three per cent since September 2022.
Signs of stress among young people are particularly evident in the labor market, where job gains have not kept pace with the surging population. Youth unemployment has risen around four times faster than unemployment for all age groups.
In March, Canada’s unemployment rate was 6.1 per cent, up 1.1 percentage points since December 2022. Over the same period, unemployment among young people aged 15 to 29 was up 4.3 percentage points to 10.9 per cent. New data for April will be released on Friday.
Financial difficulties among young people are a broader warning sign for the Canadian economy. And they do nothing to boost the country’s meager birth rate, as affordability concerns prevent many young couples from starting families.
Canada’s lack of affordability, especially in the housing market, has led young people to turn their backs on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The under 30 crowd now largely favors the Conservative Party, a historic sacrifice.
Trudeau tried to win back those voters with his youth-focused April budget, but his poll numbers have continued to decline.
Methodology
Every week, Nanos surveys approximately 250 Canadians to get their views on personal finances, job security, the economy and real estate prices. Bloomberg publishes four-week rolling averages of the 1,000 telephone responses.
The poll has a margin of error of about three percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The margin of error can be wider when talking about subsets of the general population because the survey’s sample size is smaller.
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