NEETs
The term NEET is short for ‘Not in Employment, Education or Training’.
A young NEET is defined as a 15-29 year old, who is disengaged from both work and education. This is established as an EU wide standard, making the term applicable across EU countries, including collection of statistical data. Official EU data on NEETs can be found on the Eurostat website .
The aim of the NEET concept is to broaden the understanding of the vulnerable status of young people and to better monitor their problematic access to the labour market.
NEETs became central in policies set by the European Commission in 2010 regarding guidelines for the labour market. This also meant the creation of the youth guarantee! , which is a commitment by all member countries to ensure that all young people under the age of 30 receive a good quality offer of employment, education, apprenticeship or education within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving education.
All NEETs share the status of not accumulating human capital through formal channels (by employment or education) and therefore have greater risk of future poor employment outcomes and social exclusion. However, the group of NEETs is very heterogeneous – meaning it covers different groupings of young people who are outside employment and education for different reasons. It spans the most privileged, who voluntarily are outside the labour force, to the most vulnerable who are far from being integrated in the labour market for various reasons.
In the context of the NEET-inclusion project the focus is on young NEETs with Autism Spectrum Disorder (or similar conditions), which is a particularly vulnerable sub-group of NEETs.
To learn more about NEETs check out the topic on Eurofound.
