Abstract:

“Youth NEET (not in employment, education or training)” is an umbrella concept covering a wide range of situations and vulnerabilities that youth have to face in their transition from school to the world of work such as: unemployment and long term unemployment, early school leaving, being discouraged on the labor market, social exclusion, etc. The NEETs are a very heterogeneous group, but not all of them are vulnerable, only some youth have a higher probability to become NEET or to be entrapped in a “NEET period” for a longer time. Due to the high heterogeneity of the concept, its dis-aggregation on gender, age and unemployment vs. inactivity is a must in order to understand if the causes are in the cultural patterns of the societies or in the economic difficulties that different economies experience. NEET rates vary a lot among EU-28 countries, from 4.7% in Netherlands to 21.4% in Italy. The aim of the paper is to analyze firstly the structure of NEETs by different sub-groups and then, to analyze their opinions towards education, skills and employability. For this scope Eurostat data on NEET rates, as well as the data sets of Flash Eurobarometer 395 (European Youth) and Special Eurobarometer 417 (European Area of Skills and Qualifications) are used.

Keywords:

Youth NEET, vulnerability, unemployment, inactivity.