The NEET indicator — standing for Not in Education, Employment, or Training — was introduced in the UK in the 1990s to capture young people at risk of long-term disadvantage early in their adult lives.
It has since become a standard metric worldwide, used by organizations like the OECD, Eurostat, and ILO to track youth disconnection in developed economies.
For decades, NEET has been viewed as a reliable alarm bell for social and economic vulnerability. Yet in the 2020s, the indicator is increasingly failing to reflect reality. Aggregate NEET rates in many advanced countries appear stable or even improving — a misleading picture that masks a growing crisis among young men.
The Masking Effect: Gender Dynamics and Declining Parenthood
Overall NEET figures look reassuring in many places. In the EU, the rate for ages 15–29 fell from around 13% in 2014 to about 11% in recent years. In the UK, the 16–24 NEET rate hovers around 12–13%, with fluctuations but no dramatic long-term spike. Similar patterns hold in Canada, Germany, and other OECD nations.
This apparent stability stems from two key trends working in opposite directions:
- Young women's NEET rates have declined significantly over the past decade or two. Fewer young women are staying home full-time with children, thanks to greater access to education, childcare support, and labor market participation. Young motherhood — once a major driver of female NEET status — has become less common or shorter-lived.
- Young men's disconnection has risen sharply, offsetting the female improvement. Many young men are neither studying, working, seeking work, nor parenting — a group economists sometimes call "disconnected" or "inactive non-parents."
The result: flat or falling aggregate NEET numbers hide a rapid deterioration for one demographic. The indicator, by lumping everyone together, understates the scale of the problem.
A Closer Look at the Troubling Subgroup
The most concerning rise involves young men aged 20–24 who are fully disengaged — not in education, employment, training, job search, or caregiving.
- In the UK, this specific group's share has roughly doubled over the past decade, climbing from around 4.5% to 9% in some analyses and reports.
- In Canada, NEET rates among young men (especially those without bachelor's degrees) have ticked upward in recent years, with notable increases in labor force exit among 20–29-year-olds.
- In Germany and other parts of Europe, while overall NEET remains relatively low (around 7–8% in Germany), gender-specific trends show men's rates edging higher in certain cohorts, reaching decade-high levels in some breakdowns.
This subgroup — often economically inactive due to mental health issues, discouragement, or other barriers — faces heightened risks of long-term exclusion, poverty, and poor health outcomes.
Why NEET Is Losing Its Precision
Several flaws in the NEET definition contribute to the distortion:
- Inclusion of young parents (especially mothers caring for children) inflates the metric historically but now shrinks as parenting patterns change — creating an artificial "improvement."
- No distinction between voluntary/involuntary inactivity or between job-seekers and the fully disconnected.
- Lack of granularity on subgroups like non-parenting inactive young men, who represent the fastest-growing at-risk category.
Critics argue NEET now smooths over rather than reveals the problem. It captures broad disconnection but dilutes the signal on emerging vulnerabilities, particularly among young men.
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Implications for Policy and Society
Stable headline NEET numbers can breed complacency, delaying targeted interventions. Policymakers risk missing the mark if they focus only on overall rates rather than drilling into gender, age, and activity breakdowns.
Better alternatives might include:
- Sub-metrics for "inactive non-caregivers" or "disconnected youth excluding parents."
- Enhanced tracking of mental health, economic inactivity drivers, and long-term outcomes.
- Gender-specific lenses to address why young men are increasingly withdrawing.
The NEET concept served well for decades, but today's realities demand a more nuanced tool. Without it, societies may underestimate a deepening divide — one where aggregate progress conceals a quiet crisis among young men at the edge of adulthood.
