I made significantly more than $27k a year with the Ontario government when I started as an intern (although it was more of an internship in name only). As a starting policy advisor it's well over twice as much. Out of curiosity I just looked through the internal postings and the lowest paid job I could find was at just over $700 a week, or $37k a year. This was as a receptionist. There may be some more menial jobs paying less, but these are increasingly outsourced to the private sector.
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Originally Posted by freeweed
To be fair what you describe is kinda normal. The years when the majority of new grads all get hired very quickly into decent jobs.. are rare. But yeah, things have been a tad on the crappy side since 2008 or so. We got very spoiled leading up to the recession.
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As a relatively recent grad I found it very hard to even get anything initially, and worked my way through several (paid) internships and extensions of former summer jobs. I am still on contract - which is normal for the government - but found that a significantly higher percentage of applications were getting a response after I could truthfully claim a couple years experience. Before my last job I was lucky to get a response for every 20 applications.
I've pretty much come to terms that for many sectors going from contract to contract until one of them can afford to make your position permanent is the way it works now. I'm hoping my current position will become permanent after my contract is up and there seems to be a decent chance of that.
As for the job market in Toronto there are huge numbers of postings, but each one gets huge numbers of applicants. Hence the experience making all the difference. It's not Calgary, but the population growth coupled with a relatively stable (albeit high) unemployment rate means the jobs must be coming from somewhere.