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Canada’s unemployment rate among students continues to climb, showing no signs of slowing down in the immediate future. 

The national unemployment rate jumped 0.2 percentage points in August (6.6%) over July (6.4%), owing to crippling interest rates. Students returning to school in the fall are bearing the brunt of job market woes.

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem has repeatedly said the central bank wants economic growth to pick up again amid successive interest rate cuts. 

According to the most recent labour force survey by Statistics Canada, jobs gained (22,000) month-over-month lagged behind population growth.

Between May and August, the unemployment rate for students was 16.7% on average, up from 12.9% year-over-year. Their joblessness rose to the highest level since summer 2012, excluding the pandemic summer of 2020.

The Trudeau Liberals are running for the hills after Immigration Canada permitted hundreds of thousands of foreign students to work unlimited hours at the expense of Canadians.

READ MORE: https://t.co/EMY4ImE11C pic.twitter.com/r9GN0GlCqE

— Rebel News Canada (@RebelNews_CA) January 9, 2024

The Trudeau government received incredible pushback from voters earlier this year after StatsCan confirmed that foreign students received employment at the expense of Canadian youth. 

On December 7, Immigration Minister Marc Miller told reporters that foreign students were not "taking jobs away from other people," despite a lack of evidence to substantiate his claim. 

"Have you taken a look at what impact that extension could have on permanent residents in Canada who are competing for those same jobs?" asked a reporter. Miller replied: "Well, look, there’s labour shortages across the country."

The immigration minister estimated that 80% of the 807,000 foreign students in Canada worked over 20 hours a week. He then imposed a 20-hour weekly work cap, which was initially in place until November 15, 2022. This cap was extended to April 30, 2024, briefly reduced back to 20 hours, and then increased to 24 hours in the fall after surveys linked these changes to rising unemployment. 

The Departments of Immigration and Labour could not speak to the impacts of repealing their work cap on youth unemployment, reported Blacklock’s Reporter.

Pierre Poilievre slams former Liberal immigration minister Sean Fraser for his "total incompetence" in managing the international students program and attacking "the very programs he ran up until two weeks ago". pic.twitter.com/nOPNr6ySO1

— Rebel News Canada (@RebelNews_CA) August 23, 2023

Then-immigration minister Sean Fraser on October 10, 2022, told the House of Commons "There are 500,000 international students living in Canada who can make contributions" in the workforce. "It is a great day for the economy," he said.

The issue came to a head last summer with reports of foreign students living in homeless shelters and accessing food banks.

Canada accepted a record 1,040,000 foreign students last year, according to immigration data. The number of foreign study permits issued has nearly tripled to 352,305 since 2015.