Gone are the days of being a carefree student.
Fewer students are working while going to school, says the latest release from Statistics Canada. The drop spans between the 2007-2008 and 2009-2010 academic years, coinciding with the recent economic downfall.
These stats ring true for fourth-year St. Mary’s University student Colleen Merlin, who spent an entire semester last year looking for part-time work.
“I think it’s pretty much impossible to find something for students other than service-related jobs, or jobs in the customer-service industry in general,” says Merlin.
The service industry employed 96 per cent of those students lucky enough to land jobs during the 2009-2010 academic year. This includes retail gigs as well as the food-and-beverage sector. Fourth-year Dalhousie student Alex Sisley said that after finding his current job he left retail and never looked back.
“I have a lot of friends that cant find jobs that they like, but they do it because they have to pay the bills,” he says.
