Par4QC
In general College degrees and University degrees differ greatly up here both in scope , difficulty and admission requirement. In high school kids choose an option so take a University, College or trades stream which differs in academic intensity and difficulty , with the University stream being the most difficult and intense.
In general Univeristy degree are 4 years for a Bachelors with most ( not all ) college degrees being 2 years. Costs also differ greatly between the two although some very specific College degrees can be quite expensive as well.
As for posted employment rates, never believe the numbers because they are always manipulated to produce a desired result and have ulterior motivations. We are around 5/6/% unemployment nationally. We have a huge immigrant population, took in many hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and take in about 300,000 different classes of immigrants a year , 1/3 of which are for economic reasons ( ie trained , educated ) so with a population of 36 million, that's a lot, IMO. We also have a large aboriginal population , many of whom live in remote areas where there might be limited employment ops, add to this that Canada has a y generous social assistance programs,
( welfare, disability, Unemployment etc) and free health care for everyone so in many instances there is little motivation for some to work. When I worked for WCB, claimants received up to 90% of their salaries in many cases and free meds etc= a big incentive to malinger.
Western Canada is heavily reliant on the Oil and Gas industry ( mnaynnon University educated blue collar workers ) this is a highly cyclical industry which has been in a down cycle for a while now and has high unemployment in this industry.
Nonetheless, statistics show that employment rates and salaries are higher amongst those with post secondary education than those without.