---
title: "Young worker — orientation, prohibited work, and the age that is not one number"
description: "Who counts as a young or new worker in Canadian OHS law, the orientation employers must provide, and why minimum ages differ by task and by province."
term: "Young worker"
definition: "A worker below an age set by the jurisdiction — commonly under 25 for statistical and orientation purposes, with minimum working ages set separately by task and sector — for whom employers owe specific orientation, supervision and, in some work, an outright prohibition."
alsoKnownAs:
  - "New and young worker"
  - "Young and new worker orientation"
jurisdiction: "Canada"
locale: "en-CA"
publishedOn: 2026-09-06
reviewedOn: 2026-09-06
canonical: "https://safeally.net/en-ca/glossary/young-worker/"
sources:
  - label: "Young workers — health and safety"
    url: "https://www.ccohs.ca/youngworkers/youngworkers.html"
    publisher: "CCOHS"
  - label: "OHS Regulation, Part 3 — young or new worker orientation and training"
    url: "https://www.worksafebc.com/en/law-policy/occupational-health-safety/searchable-ohs-regulation/ohs-regulation/part-03-rights-and-responsibilities"
    publisher: "WorkSafeBC"
  - label: "Occupational Health and Safety Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. O.1"
    url: "https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90o01"
    publisher: "Government of Ontario"
---

# Young worker — orientation, prohibited work, and the age that is not one number

A worker below an age set by the jurisdiction — commonly under 25 for statistical and orientation purposes, with minimum working ages set separately by task and sector — for whom employers owe specific orientation, supervision and, in some work, an outright prohibition.

Young workers are injured disproportionately in their first weeks on a job, and
the regulatory response is built on that fact rather than on age alone: several
jurisdictions attach the same orientation duty to **young _or new_** workers,
which catches a fifty-year-old on their first day as well as a student in July.

## What it means in practice

- **Orientation is specified, not left to judgement.** Emergency procedures, the
  location of first aid, hazards of the work, PPE, the right to refuse, who to
  ask, and how to report an injury — before the work starts, and documented.
- **Minimum ages vary by task, not by a single national number.** Construction,
  underground mining, logging and industrial establishments carry their own floors
  in each province, and the age for one is not the age for another.
- **Supervision has to be real.** Regulations in several provinces require a young
  worker to be supervised by a competent adult worker for specified tasks; "he was
  working with the crew" is not the same thing.
- **Records matter.** The orientation is one of the easiest pieces of due
  diligence evidence to produce and one of the most commonly missing.

## What it is not

**It is not a summer problem.** Co-op placements, apprentices and part-time
students work year-round, and the injury pattern follows time-in-job more than
season.

**It is not covered by a general onboarding.** A payroll and conduct induction is
not a health and safety orientation, and where the regulation lists topics, the
list is the standard.

**And it is not the same as the European regimes for young workers.** France,
Germany, Spain and Italy restrict minors through labour codes and specific
derogation procedures — Germany's Jugendarbeitsschutzgesetz being the closest to a
single instrument. Canada's protections are OHS-regulation-based, per province and
per task, so an internal "under-18 policy" written for a European group does not
map onto them.