Investing in Disadvantaged Youth – Challenges and Policies

By Glenda Quintini. The Great Recession has hit youth harder than any other group in the labour market, and the situation has improved only little since. While public debates about youth labour market outcomes tend to focus on the concerning levels of youth unemployment – around 50% in Spain and Greece, 40% in Italy, and 25% in France – a better measure of labour market performance among young people is the rate of youth not in employment, education or training (the ‘NEETs’). The main reason is that unemployment is only part of the problem: an even greater share of young people are out of education or work but not looking for a job, and these inactive youth are not captured by the youth unemployment rate. Together, inactive and unemployed NEETs accounted for around 14% of all 15-29 year-olds in OECD countries in 2014, 1.5 percentage points more than before the start of the crisis (OECD Employment Outlook, 2015). Many of these youth, and particularly those at risk of remaining NEET for longer, have a disadvantaged background. More...