Are young Canadians being properly prepped to earn in the future?

With anxiety among younger generations around their ability to get jobs to help build their financial stability, a new report finds that most Canadians believe the country's education system is failing to prepare children for the workforce of the future.

The Future Education & Career Paths Report, commissioned by Embark, Canada's digital education savings and planning company, in partnership with Angus Reid, found that just 20 per cent of Canadians agree children are being adequately prepared for the careers that will exist by mid-century.

More strikingly, 57 per cent actively disagree. The findings land at a moment when youth unemployment in Canada has already reached levels that economists are describing as a crisis, and when many parents report they are falling behind on the savings needed to fund whatever education path their children eventually take.

A crisis already in motion

While looking ahead to 2050, the Embark report does not describe a distant problem.

Canada's youth unemployment rate climbed from 10 per cent in 2022 to 13.8 per cent in 2025, the fastest three-year increase on record outside of a recession, according to a Fraser Institute report authored by senior fellow Philip Cross.

Among returning students in May 2025, the unemployment rate surpassed 20 per cent, the highest in 25 years outside the pandemic. As Wealth Professional has reported, youth unemployment has become one of the most pressing financial security concerns for a generation of young Canadians, with Desjardins economists warning that unemployment early in a career often results in reduced earnings not only immediately but throughout a person's lifetime.

Cross was unequivocal in his assessment. "Canada's youth unemployment is a crisis and will have serious consequences in later years when youths today who are unable to secure work try to find steady employment as adults," he wrote.

That long-term scarring effect makes the education and preparation question not merely academic — it is a financial planning issue with a multi-decade horizon.

The trades shift

For decades, a university degree was treated as the default blueprint for career security. That consensus has eroded.

The Embark study reveals that 50 per cent of respondents now say trade school or apprenticeship programs represent the best preparation for a successful career by 2050, compared with 37 per cent who still point to a university or graduate degree as the better path.

Support for trades peaks in British Columbia, where 55 per cent of respondents favour that route, and is strongest among Generation X at 48 per cent. Among Gen Z, however, support for the trades path drops sharply to just 22 per cent, marking a generational divide that may reflect different assumptions about AI's impact on manual versus knowledge work.

Registered Education Savings Plans (RESPs), which Canadian families have long used to fund postsecondary education can be used for qualified trades and apprenticeship programs as well as university, but many parents may not have structured their contributions with that optionality in mind, and a significant number are not saving at all.

Previous Embark research found that 43 per cent of Canadian parents have stopped saving for their children's education entirely, and 29 per cent have withdrawn from education savings to cover other costs, as the cost of living has squeezed household budgets from multiple directions.

Andrew Lo, chief executive officer at Embark, framed the challenge plainly. "This data shows Canadians are already rethinking the path," he said. "More parents than ever see trades and apprenticeships as a smart, viable route to a great career, right alongside university. We're focused on making sure families can save for whichever path their child chooses, without having to bet everything on one outcome."

AI is making education more expensive, not less

A widespread assumption has been that AI would lower the cost of learning through automation, personalisation, and scale.

The survey suggests Canadians are not buying it. A significant majority (59 per cent) expect they will need to save more for postsecondary education because of AI, compared to just six per cent who expect to save less.

Concern about the cost of postsecondary education overall is near-universal, with 82 per cent of respondents reporting they are worried about it.

That anxiety is well-founded: a four-year university education in Canada was projected to cost an average of $101,319 in 2025  (the first time that figure has crossed the $100,000 threshold) and for parents of newborns, costs are forecast to rise a further 38 per cent to $137,490 over the next 18 years, according to earlier Embark research.

Meanwhile, 84 per cent of survey respondents are concerned AI will make degrees less valuable, a sentiment that, combined with rising cost expectations, creates a compounding pressure on household education savings.

The regional data suggests this pressure is felt most acutely in Alberta and Atlantic Canada, where 69 per cent and 68 per cent of respondents, respectively, expect to need to save more because of AI — the highest rates in the country.

Those pressures do not exist in isolation. Young Canadians are simultaneously navigating a housing market that has pushed homeownership out of reach for much of their generation with a June 2026 Nanos Research survey finding that 63 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 34 feel homeownership is out of reach compared with 31 per cent of those aged 55 and over.

The knock-on effect for parents is a financial squeeze from both directions: rising education savings targets on one side, and adult children who cannot afford to leave home on the other.

Eighty per cent of Canadians agree that individuals will need to invest more in education and training throughout their careers, not just once at the start, reinforcing an emerging view of lifelong learning as a recurring financial commitment

The careers of 2050

The report maps out where demand for workers is most likely to concentrate over the coming quarter-century. Several sectors stand out.

Canada's AI, data science, and machine learning market is projected to reach USD $362.9 billion by 2033, with AI-related job postings growing from 4,000 in 2012 to 57,000 in 2024, according to data cited in the report.

Ethics, governance, and compliance functions specifically tied to AI are also expected to grow sharply, with Canada's AI governance and compliance market forecast to expand at a 13.9 per cent compound annual growth rate through 2035.

The clean energy transition presents another substantial opportunity. Reaching net-zero by 2050 could generate approximately 2.2 million clean energy jobs nationally, including up to 1.3 million roles in EV-related industries.

The residential energy retrofit sector alone is expected to add roughly 40,600 direct jobs between 2023 and 2032, with some trades requiring growth of 300 to 400 per cent above current levels to meet demand. Canada's bioinformatics and genetic engineering market, meanwhile, is projected to grow from $1.23 billion in 2022 to $4.11 billion by 2030.