A student checks out a bulletin board with job postings. (Al Behrman/Associated Press)Clancy Snook knows first-hand the frustration of trying to find work during the worst summer for student employment in more than 30 years.

The 20-year-old interior design student at Toronto's Ryerson University sent out 50 resumés this year in a fruitless search for summer employment.

"There were just no jobs anywhere being offered," Snook told CBC News.

"Ideally, I wouldn't work through the school year because school commitments are intense," she said. "But at this point, I would have to because I've been unemployed for four months."

Snook has plenty of company in the jobless camp this year. The summer of 2009 is on track to be the bleakest in a generation for the country's students.

Statistics Canada reported Friday that student unemployment hit 20.9 per cent in July — the highest jobless rate since the agency began collecting comparable data in 1977.

That jobless rate represented an increase of 7.1 percentage points from July 2008. In the past year, student employment has fallen by 152,000 as the recession hits young people particularly hard. StatsCan says that's the fastest year-over-year employment decline for any July since 1982.

The miserable summer job market comes as the Canadian economy is poised to return to growth after stalling in recession. But jobless figures tend to lag economic recovery, so students hoping for a quick hiring rebound may be disappointed.

"First comes growth, and then comes the hiring," said TD Bank economist Diana Petramala. "Employment not only tends to lag economic growth during recoveries, it tends to recover at a much slower pace," she wrote in a report.

For students, the lag has been especially painful, as they struggle to earn enough to pay the coming year's tuition bill.

Student leaders call for government action

Student leaders called on governments to boost financial aid and reduce tuition fees, which now average almost $5,000 a year for university undergrads and are poised to rise further in at least six provinces come September.

The terrible student employment numbers came as no surprise to the Canadian Federation of Students, where student leaders have been hearing jobless horror stories for months.

"We know of one student union which advertised five job openings and got more than a thousand applications," CFS national chair Katherine Giroux-Bougard said in an interview.

"Many students will face difficult choices," she said. "Either take on more debt or some may have to make the decision not to attend school this year."

Economists say fewer jobs for students may also result in more parents having to make up the funding gap, further worsening the economic recovery as the parents' spending plans are put on hold to keep their children in school.

'Employers are still hiring'

Nancy Shafer of Youth Employment Services — a jobs counselling centre for young people — said now's not the time for students to give up searching for work.

"Employers are still hiring," she told CBC News. "It's taking [employers] longer to make their decisions, but they're still hiring and it's up to the young job seeker to put everything they've got into that job search," she said.

Shafer listed the environmental, health-care, financial and not-for-profit sectors as areas that hold the most promise for student job seekers.

The July jobless stats showed why students were faring so poorly in this summer job market. The hospitality, recreation and construction industries — all major employers of students — shed 50,000 positions in the month.

Student unemployment rates during and immediately following recessions usually tend to rise dramatically and often take years to subside. Student jobless rates topped 19 per cent in the Julys of 1982, 1993 and again in 1997. Statistics Canada said the recession of the early 1990s had a lasting effect on the job market for young people.

With files from Amber Hildebrandt